Nixon approves police impound lot

The Nixon City Council recently decided to build a police impound lot for confiscated vehicles. The lot will be situated within the grounds of the city dump, about two miles north of Nixon on state Highway 80.

During the council’s recent monthly meeting, city administrator George Blanch announced that the city was looking into putting a small impound yard at the city dump for cars picked up for DWIs and other issues. These will include undamaged cars as well as police vehicles for protective measures.

The city currently has a local wrecker that has its own impound lot, and, until now, the city had a deal with the service to keep cars on its lot.

“We’re still going to have him store damaged cars,” Blanch said. “But all vehicles that are intact will be impounded at the new lot.”

The lot, which will hold up to eight cars, will be surrounded by a six-foot-high fence with three strands of barbed wire running across the top. Blanch said the initial idea was to have the lot directly across the street from City Hall, but for cosmetic as well as parking reasons, that didn’t pan out.

Council member Cindy Pieprzica said that, while she agrees that the city needs an impound lot, she doesn’t want it inside the city limits.

“I don’t think it would look good,” she said. “Having it out at the dump would be perfect, because it would have a high fence with a gate. It needs to be in an inconspicuous place.”

“I think it should be inside the city limits,” councilman John Mercer countered. “Just not across from City Hall.”

Blanch expressed concerns about having the lot at the dump. “We’re not out there on the weekends,” he said. “There’s no one there to watch the cars. Once we put a car out there, that’s just opening it up for [owners] to go in and do what they need to do.”

“If someone wants badly enough to get at their vehicle, they’re going to go through anything to do it,” Pieprzica said. “We’re supposed to have full coverage on the weekends by our police department, and one of their patrols would be to check the gate to make sure it is locked.”

The council discussed the option to put the yard near water well #6 (on County Road 483 by the baseball field), but Blanch had reservations about that as well.

“The problem out there is you have to have a 150-foot radius (buffer zone) outside the well, and you can’t have anything that might drop oil or gas in that vicinity,” he said.

When asked when the new impound lot would be ready, Blanch was optimistic.

“It probably won’t take more than a couple of months,” he said. “I’m certainly confident we’ll have it ready before summer.”