Council Will Decide if Lots Are Nuisances to the Public : Simi Valley: The city can clear property of tumbleweeds at the owners’ expense. The wind-blown vegetation is mainly considered a traffic hazard.

Hoping to ward off possible fire and traffic hazards caused by rolling tumbleweeds, the Simi Valley City Council tonight will consider declaring 29 weed-filled parcels public nuisances so that they can be cleared by city-hired crews at the owners’ expense.

Each fall, the city inspects all vacant parcels to determine which ones contain an overgrowth of tumbleweeds, which often break free in Santa Ana winds and blow through streets and residential areas.

This year, 230 properties were identified and owners were sent letters asking them to voluntarily remove the tumbleweeds, also known as Russian thistle, by Oct. 29.

Owners of land now under council review did not respond to the letter and, if their property is declared a nuisance, will be forced to reimburse the city for the cost of removing the weeds.

“This is something we started maybe eight to 10 years ago because we were having problems with tumbleweeds,” Mayor Greg Stratton said Friday. “It’s a kind of ritual we go through.

“There are always a few people who may be new or who wait until that last letter to clean them up. Normally we start out with a big list and, as the letters get progressively more threatening, the list whittles down.”

Last year, the city declared 39 parcels public nuisances and, by the time it had hired a contractor to clear the land at owner expense, only one parcel remained in violation of the policy.

If the council goes ahead tonight with its nuisance declaration, property owners will be sent another letter and given another seven days to clear their land, said Joe Hreha, deputy director of the city’s Environmental Services Department.

If after seven days the property is still not cleared, the city will hire a contractor to remove the tumbleweeds and bill the property owners for the expense. If an owner refuses to pay, Hreha said, the city could attach a lien to the property and force the owner to pay through increased property taxes.

But things have rarely gone that far, Hreha said.

“This is just the first step in a very, very routine process,” he said.

Stratton said the tumbleweeds pose little fire threat because peak fire season has usually passed by the time the large plants dry out and break free of their roots. More troubling, he said, are the traffic problems caused by drivers steering clear of wind-blown weeds.

“You get all these people dodging tumbleweeds and it’s not that the tumbleweeds themselves are intrinsically dangerous,” Stratton said. “But the people dodging them are dangerous.”

But Councilman Bill Davis said he supports the mandatory abatement primarily because the free-roaming clumps of dried roots and branches can spread brush fires.

He said he experienced that fire threat first-hand during a major brush fire that charred the hillsides in the northeast area of the city in the early 1980s.

“I saw what they can do,” Davis said. “They’re like a five-foot ball of flames. They’d hit the ground and bounce about 30 feet in the air and then come down again on the grass.”