The Diamondville Town Council passed Ordinance 464 concerning junk cars at the council meeting on Monday, July 17. The ordinance has been heavily debated by councilmembers and the public.

Diamondville Police Chief Mike Thompson voiced concerns about potential loopholes if the council made any more changes to the ordinance, reminding the public that the original purpose of the ordinance was to give the police department more power to enforce the removal of junk cars and clean up the town.

“People live in towns because they don’t want certain things right next to them, and town laws protect them from those things,” Thompson said.

The ordinance includes a permit that residents can purchase if they have “hobby cars” that would technically be classified as junk if a resident wasn’t fixing them up.

These hobby permits will be a way for the council and the police department to ensure that residents are indeed making progress on their hobby cars, as the permits need to be renewed every two years.

Council members and guests agreed that the ordinance would help clean up the town of Diamondville, and prevent the current problem of a few residents having 15 junk cars in plain sight without a junk/salvage yard business license.

Councilman Clint Bowen expressed concern that the ordinance would be “nipping away at people’s freedoms.”

Town clerk Alyssa Hartmann said the ordinance with the hobby permit wouldn’t “pick on the people who are actually working on their cars.”

The council passed Ordinance 463 at the last meeting on July 5. That ordinance discussed abandoned property, which the council said is different from just a junk car that belongs to someone who still claims it as their own.

After the council passed the ordinance, Councilman Clint Bowen said,

“We can always look at this later if it doesn’t work, but we have to give the police some power to see if it works.”

The next Diamondville Town Council meeting is on Monday, July 31, at 6:00 p.m. at Diamondville Town Hall.