SCHOFIELD, WI (WSAU) — The city of Schofield has set a new deadline for residents and management of the Northern Mobile Home Park to come into compliance following a special meeting of the City Council on Tuesday.
Be compliant by October 19th or else the city will take further action by November 5th.
The decision came following roughly 30 minutes of closed-door discussion on the matter and left many residents wondering where they will go if they do lose their homes.
“Right now I have no plan, I don’t have too much money, I don’t know where I’m going to go, but I’ll figure it out,” said Jeff Syring, a resident of the park for nearly nine years. He says the last few months have been very stressful for himself and the other residents who have basically been living month-to-month not knowing if or when they’ll lose their home. “It’s not good, it gets you anxious. When you get done with work you want to go home and relax, but when you get home you don’t know if it’s going to be your home or not.”
Of the nearly 70 lots available in the park, just 30 remain occupied.
The dozen or so residents of the park that was at the meeting expressed frustration beforehand with a lack of public input on the agenda, even though the notice for the meeting posted on the city’s website offered a link to sign up for public input.
City officials declined to speak on the record following Tuesday’s meeting. During the meeting, Mayor Kraig Hoehn said the city wasn’t looking to displace residents. City Attorney Shane Vanderwaal said the action was due to several years of non-compliance and lack of action on hundreds of violations which had piled up. Ward 2 Alder Joan Joss, whose district includes the park, called it one of the toughest decisions she has had to make and was visibly shaken before casting her “yes” vote during the roll call.
The vote to impose the new deadlines was unanimous.
The park’s operating license was originally pulled last spring, with residents given an August 1st deadline to vacate the property. A last-minute appeal was filed in the case however that appeal was dismissed two weeks ago when attorneys for the park failed to file the proper paperwork and post a $500 bond. The case is now considered closed according to online court records.
As it stands the park does not have a license to operate.
Since the decision to pull the license the park has come under new management, and despite the uncertainty of the situation they’ve spent thousands of dollars this summer to check off hundreds of violations. Just before 2 PM Tuesday they dropped off a binder with photos of the improvements along with letters from tenents documenting the upgrades. It’s unclear if Mayor Hoehn or others on the council looked at the binder before Tuesday’s meeting.
Managers said more than 70% of the original list of over 300 violations have been corrected. That includes more than three pages of health code violations that have been trimmed down to just one page of three violations during the most recent inspection on June 19th.
The new management team for the park declined to speak on the record or be identified, but residents had nothing but praise for them. “Things have been getting done, people have been coming together. They are fixing what they can with the money that’s provided to them,” said Syring.
“I’ve been there about 9 years. When I first moved in there was a lot of weird things going on, it wasn’t a good place to live. Now it is, and we finally have a good management [team], and now this happens.” he added. “The city of Schofield, they can’t even enforce noise ordinance in this town but they can kick people out of their houses, it’s a little weird to me.”
