MARK WAITE / PVT Comstock Park residents complain about narrow, dangerous streets in their subdivision while the county public works department complained residents were encroaching onto public streets. Advertisement

An emotional plea from Patsy Lawrence, a resident of Comstock Park, convinced Nye County commissioners Tuesday not to continue enforcement actions against homeowners in the mobile home park for road encroachment.

Interim Public Works Director Dave Fanning reported his department sent out 66 letters of violation in February and early March.

That came after 153 residents of the park had signed a petition last fall expressing concern over the condition of the roads in the subdivision.

During an inspection by road department workers last December, they found numerous situations where residents placed materials within the road easement, including gravel along the shoulders to provide additional parking. The actions prevented proper drainage and narrowed some road widths to as little as nine feet.

The road department removed the gravel.

Fanning's report noted 57 homeowners responded to the first batch of 66 violation notices, of which six paid the required fees and obtained encroachment permits. Public works decided to phase in the mailings due to the large number of violations; the first phase represented only 16 percent of the violations, he wrote.

Fanning attended a meeting of the Comstock Park Association March 21, when members talked about asking for a waiver of the encroachment fees.

The encroachment base fee of $75 and the penalty of $150 would raise a total of anywhere from $70,000 to $80,000, he estimated. Otherwise, the county would have to pay for the repairs.

"When this encroachment came out, all the seniors and all the people who live in Comstock Park were trying to be law-abiding citizens," Lawrence said. "However, when we got this announcement, we were not knowledgeable about this statute."

Lawrence said numerous other housing developments in Pahrump have rock along the street, but no ditches.

"If this type of fine is going to be imposed upon the citizens of our community, I think people should be able to have time to plan and save for this money," Lawrence said.

Lawrence said residents in Comstock Park are seniors living on fixed incomes. She said some residents used $225 to pay the fine, instead of paying for their car insurance or buying essential medications, just to be law-abiding citizens.

Commissioner Butch Borasky said he sympathizes with Lawrence. He recalled a similar situation where people were up in arms along Blagg Road last year.

Commissioner Gary Hollis said there are "absolutely" encroachments in Comstock Park.

But Hollis said, "I sympathize, I really do, with this lady and her husband. They're older and they're retired and they're trying to live their dream. But whoever put that home in did not get the qualified permits that needed to be done. They have a driveway coming out onto the radius of a turn on another street.

"If someone runs into the edge of that driveway there are going to be problems. So that's going to have to be corrected, we can't have a hazard in a county right-of-way I have no idea why the county accepted these rights-of-way without even looking at the mess it was in."

Hollis made the motion to go with option 4 -- to take no action. It passed 4-0. Commissioner Joni Eastley was absent.

Fanning outlined three other options: keep assessing existing fees and penalties at $225 per residence; waive the fees and penalties and issue encroachment permits and correct encroachment violations at county expense; or specify a reduced fee of $25 for the permit with no penalty and require violations to be corrected within 90 days by the residents.

The residents signing the petition said the roads were constructed in 1964. The pavement has been deteriorating and narrowing, they said; in some places two vehicles can't pass each other safely.