March 19, 2024

City seeking public input on camper parking

The city of Newton is seeking public input for camper and trailer parking rules through a survey available on the city’s website. After talking about the subject at two recent city council meetings, discussing current rules, past rules and potential new rules, the council did not come to any conclusions about how to word the ordinance.

“In December and January the city council began discussing the current law on the parking of campers, boats, trailers and motor homes on private property, residential property in Newton,” said Erin Chambers, director of planning and zoning for the city. “At the meeting in January, council was really unclear about the direction they wanted to go and asked if we could try to find out more from citizens, what their thoughts were and what the desire of the community is in terms of where you can park those things on the property.”

Currently, a trailer cannot be parked in front of a house, a change from the 25-foot set back rule which also allowed the trailer to be parked 25 feet from the front of the property whether it was even with the house or in front of it. That change made previously compliant properties no longer compliant with no grandfathering-in allowed. The current law states campers and trailers are not required to be on any kind of hard surfaces and also that motor homes are considered vehicles and do not have to abide by camper regulations. Those two topics are both available for comment in the survey.

One issue that arose are houses with two front yards or those that have a street to both the front and the back of the property.

In that situation, the owner has a very small or sometimes non-existent place to park their trailer because it would only have the width of the house to work with.

The survey asks what the aesthetic preference would be for the parking of campers, motor homes, trailers or boats including being stored off-site, limited to side yard and rear yard regardless of how large a home may be setback, not be located within the first 25 feet of a property but beyond that it doesn’t matter even if it is in front of the home, the location doesn’t matter as long as they are place on hard surface or they don’t need to be on hard surface, and they should be allowed anywhere on a property.

It also asks if the rules should cover motor homes and if hard surface storage should be required.

The survey is available for citizens to complete until Feb. 10 after which the information will be gathered to be presented to the council at a February city council meeting. No permanent changes will be made as the issue is still only in the discussion phase.

Visit the survey at this web address: http://www.newtongov.org/civicalerts.aspx?AID=301.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com