The village of Panama is reminding residents about property maintenance as the weather warms up. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

PANAMA — The village of Panama has reached the time of the year when the Village Board starts to send out reminders to all residents about proper maintenance of their property as the weather warms up.

During the board’s April meeting, Mayor William Schneider said the village will need to put out a reminder on Facebook to get residents to take care of property maintenance issues and get things cleaned up.

“Our code enforcement officer is sending out letters to individuals that have property maintenance issues,” Schneider said. “Of the letters she sent out, one came back with a positive note that, ‘yeah, we know, we’re going to take care of it.'”

After Code Enforcement Officer Melanie Eddy sends out these letters, if no response is received a second letter is sent, followed by a visit and then a fine. One big issue that the village has been seeing that Schneider said they need to also remind residents of is that no unlicensed vehicles are allowed on properties in a zoned area.

“So what that means is you can’t have an unlicensed or unregistered vehicle on your property, anywhere in the village,” Schneider said. “I know we had some people with questions about that last year and they assured us that they had a valid registration. So, hopefully people won’t take offense if we ask them to prove that, because I think we’re going to have to revisit those individuals that the vehicle really was not.”

Schneider noted that it is pretty evident when a vehicle is not registered or inspected when there are no stickers in the window or licensed plates are removed. He emphasized that this rule is for public safety, and is not meant to be picking on anyone. It is to keep people safe and keep the village where it needs to be.

Another property related note that Schneider briefly discussed was that during the last big wind storm in the area the sidewalk was temporarily shut down in front of the village hall. The neighboring apartment building on the corner took a hit and had bricks falling off of it.

“We temporarily closed the sidewalk and talked to the business folks, who were happy to shut down for safety reasons,” Schneider said. “The owner came and took care of the issues and corrected the problems, so we’re good to go.”

Schneider added the property owner is going to continue to monitor the situation and that the village was lucky that there were not more issues during the wind storm.