Yearwood ignores Bethlehem

Most of those cited quickly got to work. One hauled away nine dumpster loads of junk.

“That was above and beyond what we expected,” said Mayor Sandy McNab.

The county chairman, however, did not clean up his property. He instead responded with a demand of his own.

Asked by a Barrow Journal reporter shortly after the letters went out if he planned to comply with the town’s request, Yearwood said he would clean up his property when the town made a road crew come back and remove asphalt it had left on his land during a repaving project.

That cleanup actually occurred weeks ago, when the contractor hired by the county for the paving work came back and removed the asphalt from Yearwood’s property, according to the mayor.

“It’s back in his court again,” McNab said.

Last week, Yearwood brought up his Bethlehem property during a May 19 budget committee’s discussion of a request to relocate the county’s Bethlehem fire station.

Yearwood told the committee that he knew of a good location for a new station – his property in Bethlehem. He appeared to be joking, because he was smiling broadly as he said it.

But when asked by a reporter if he had cleaned up that property, Yearwood said no.

In fact, he said, he has had someone drive around Bethlehem taking photographs of other properties. He said he would use the photographs at some point, apparently to show that he is being unfairly singled out.

However, in an interview Monday, Bethlehem’s mayor insisted that Yearwood is not being singled out for code-enforcement action.

“Nobody is picking on him,” the mayor said. “It’s 18-20 different people, and (local citizens) are glad it’s happening.”

McNab said he would like to see the photos that Yearwood’s associate has taken.

“If he brings me the pictures, I will get it cleaned up,” he said. “I rode around and I don’t see that many in his category of junk.”

McNab said Yearwood has not notified the town in writing that he is refusing to clean up his property.

Instead, the chairman has told the mayor as much when they have encountered each other at local meetings.

“He doesn’t want to clean that up,” McNab said. “He doesn’t want to spend the money on it. He said there’s other places in town a lot worse than that, and people are living in it.

“I asked him, ‘Then, you tell me where and we’ll get it cleaned up,’ and I haven’t heard anything else from it.”

The mayor said Yearwood specifically complained that an old upholstered chair in a newspaper photograph never belonged to him.

Twice at recent meetings, the chairman has joked that a Barrow Journal reporter deposited the chair there just to make him look bad in the photographs published April 7.

McNab said it doesn’t matter who put the junk on Yearwood’s property.

“People throw stuff in my front yard all the time but I have to clean it up,” he said. “It’s just part of being a property owner.”

Asked if he thought the owner of the discarded chair might have thought Yearwood’s property was a dumping area, McNab said it’s possible.

“It would be as good a place as any to leave it,” he said. “A little more junk wouldn’t make any difference.”

The mayor said the council would have to take action to pursue the matter legally. It will be discussed at the town council’s June 7 meeting.

McNab said he has located a Winder attorney who informally has agreed to provide as-needed services as the town’s municipal judge.

That attorney is Michael Strickland of Strickland, Chesnutt and Lindsay LLP, according to the mayor.

Anyone in violation of the town’s nuisance ordinance could face a 60-day jail sentence or a $1,000 fine – for each day of the violation, which mirrors the county’s punishment for the same offense.

Taking care of the problem would be a lot cheaper for Yearwood, according to the mayor.

“$400 to $500, I would imagine, would be more than enough,” McNab said. “He’s spent that much time worrying about it.

“If somebody was aggravating me the way he’s been aggravated over all this, I would have gone out and done it on Sunday afternoons, if that was the only time I had to do anything. I would get a wheelbarrow and pick it up piece by piece if that’s what it takes.”

The mayor said the county chairman’s inaction is sending a poor message.

“To me, it’s not showing he cares about his community,” he said.