One bad apple, on Rivlyn Ave., down by the River, South of Hwy 10 - an offensive mess. Drive down there and have a look. Make it a shaming tour for people in the city to go and look.
John Dehen's ward. Ward 3. Interestingly, Councilmember Elvig and the mayor at the recent televised meeting were the loudest voices defending this nuisance situation. Defending this individual. Saying cut some slack. That's arguably to be expected, given the individual's ways and means of mailing things in the past.
However, that bad apple is the cause of current effort to put enforcement teeth into ordinances against "nuisance" or "property rights of others," depending how you look at it.
During the 2008 Comp Plan session, in the hallway, last night, Wed. Sept. 12, an interesting debate about this between Hendriksen and Dehen. People moving here to be left alone, vs. growing as an area and a need to have rules and to police the rules.
Strangely, two of the leading council mavens of growth-is-good prejudice were the two speaking against harshness toward the particular precipitating nuisance situation causing the new ordinance enforcement effort; which Dehen linked to growth being a factor for needing changing ways and for harsher and less lax attention to "rules."
It reminds me of grade school, and my propensity to get demerits, over "rules" incompatible with my energy and will and spirit.
At home, there's a back boundary situation where the people due north have exotic birds and chickens cooped across the property line, onto the north end of the property I live on, without regard for setback and minimum lot size for such activity. And without regard to our not wanting their "stuff," on our land. It will be helpful - Having enforcement there, for Ramsey Code Sect. 5.09.01 where a 75 foot setback from dwellings is required and where absent a Conditional Use Permit no lot smaller than 3 acres can be used this way. They are on 0.85 acres, impinging on a 200' x 400' lot, with our larger lot of the two having buffering woods appraoching the back boundary. Probably it would not be a problem if they'd simply kept their "stuff" on their side of the property line. Then, we would care very, very much less about what "stuff" they were keeping. They want their full yard, their bird coop, and use of someone else's woods as if theirs. It doesn't work that way.
Acreting land that way, over time, can lead to adverse possession and your owning less than you thought you did. It's something you have to defend against.
So Hendriksen saying live and let live - if you cannot see "stuff" from off the property what city interest exists in mandating how it is stored or kept as long as it is not an impingment on the neighbors, on wetlands, or on protected areas for other reasons - why is it anyone else's business? There's sense to that.
Observing that for unrelated political or "grudge" reasons people can complain about those living at a distance, those they don't like, neighbors or not, means the more active voices in Ramsey risk the most being a target of such pettiness.
Dehen and Hendriksen both liked trying to see if they could convince the other. I don't think either succeeded. Me, I agree with my friends.
But -- It does need thought.
Many moved here to be away from officiousness over things and thoughts, and to have room on land to use it "one's own way" without some intrusive official inventing problems and reasons to enforce things over-vigorously. But then there's that chicken coop crossing for no sensible reason the property line, and the coin has two sides.
The best answer might be if the immediate neighbor does not complain, and it is not something like a loud obnoxious noise reaching far down a street, why entertain a distant person's complaint?