Property owners in Manteno that have let the lawns grow out of control have been warned. The village will be cracking down on grass that has not been mowed for weeks on some properties.

Village Administrator Chris LaRocque said at Monday’s village board meeting that a village ordinance states that any grass more than eight inches tall is considered a violation.

“Right now I’m working on about 15 different violations that we have in town,” he said. “The first step is that we have to give them a five-day notice. So we do give them time to get it mowed.”

Typically, a notice is put on the door, but LaRocque added that there are some foreclosures on homes in the village and that can take a little bit longer for the owner to get notified.

“It seems like the banks kind of pass these [foreclosures] around,” he said. “You start with one bank, and then you find out that the loan has been passed on to another one. So we do have three foreclosures in town that are all in violation.”

The village is working with the banks to get the grass cut. The loan institutions all have companies that come in and take care of the property.

“So it is a little lengthy of a process, obviously dealing with federal loan organizations,” LaRocque said. “They’ve got hundreds of thousands of these properties across the United States, so it takes a little while to get them to comply, but we just wanted to make everybody aware that we’re working on them.”

The village has limited funds to go in and mow the lawns. They can farm out the work and then put a lien on the property.

“We just can’t do that every week for all the properties that we have that are in violation,” he said. “Typically, vacant lots that are not taken care of, we might mow those once or twice a year. It is the most we can do. It’s just too expensive to maintain those on a regular basis.”

When the village does sub-out the contract to mow a property that is in violation, the contractor sets the price that they will charge the property owner.

“We’ve got three or four local companies that we work with,” LaRocque said. “So we just kind of rotate them through. We’ll just call one that we’ve used in the past. Next time, we’ll call somebody different. We just try and use the local companies that are here in Manteno, and then they just charge whatever they charge.”

LaRocque added when it gets to the point of having to use a contractor, the grass is one to two feet tall. It can be more expensive than normal.

“It’s not just go over there for 20 minutes and mow an [uncut] lot,” he said. “It takes them two or three hours to do it.”

Plan commission vacancy filled

The board also filled a vacancy that arose on the Planning Commission Board when Emily Fisher-Gentry resigned recently. A motion to appoint Andy Lee to the Planning Commission was unanimously approved.