Tire dump threatens golden years for retired couple

POINT MACKENZIE — John Fraley is just plain tired.

A longtime Valley resident who spent the last few years working in the Lower 48, John and wife SharLynn returned to the Valley recently. They purchased a 1-acre plot of land in the Point MacKenzie area off Starline Lane, planning to build a house there and live out their golden years, John said.

“That was the plan,” John said. “There was originally a house on this property, but it burned in 1995. But it has electrical here and we had a guy come in and clear some trees.”

That was the plan, he said, until someone in the neighborhood began dumped a large number of used tires on the property — nearly 200, as of Monday morning.

“This here is about four loads or more of tires,” John said during a Friday tour of the property. “There’s another guy up on the corner with about half a dozen in his yard. I think when they turned the corner, a few fell off.”

On Friday, John had counted 102 unwanted tires on his property, but since that interview, someone dumped another 75 to 100 tires in the driveway sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning, he said.

“I got more of them,” he said. “Now we’re looking at probably $3,000 to get rid of them. I might have 200 of them sitting there now. I can’t even pull into the driveway, they’re all the way to the road.”

Having unwanted junk dumped on your property isn’t an unusual occurrence in the Valley, said Alex Strawn, Permit Center manager for the Mat-Su Borough. What’s unusual about Fraley’s case is they know who dumped the tires there.

A borough code enforcement officer contacted a woman at a residence a couple blocks from Fraley’s property and the woman admitted she and a man who live there operate an auto repair and tire business from their home, Strawn said. She also admitted dumping the tires and was given a week remove the tired up.

Three weeks later, the tires are still there. The Fraleys now want to sell the land and use the money to buy a home in the Willow area, John said. As for the people who dumped the tires, Strawn said attempts to contact them again to serve them with a citation for dumping the tires have been unsuccessful.

“We have made one attempt to reach the violators again and were not able to get hold of them,” Strawn said. “The way the court system works is we have to personally issue citations, so we’re going to keep trying to find the person until we do.”

In the mean time, John said he and his wife are in limbo. They’re getting older, he has a disability and they are physically unable to move so many tires off their land. Also, they don’t have the money to clean them up and dispose of them at the borough landfill. The landfill charges $15 a tire, so disposing of the tires would cost about $3,000, not including what they’d have to pay to have someone load them up and take them to the landfill, John said.

“Really now, since it’s rained so much, it’s harder to get rid of them because you have to get all the water out of them before loading them,” he said. “I’d have to get somebody to at least load them up for me and go to the dump and unload them.”

The tires also are making it impossible for the Fraleys to sell the land and make their move to Willow, John said. Because any potential buyer would have to bear the expense of cleaning up the tires, they can’t get back what they paid for the land, he said.

“We had a real estate agent tell us we won’t get what we paid for it because of the tires,” John said. “She said, ‘you get rid of all the tires and we’ll list it. As it is, that’s a liability.’ … We’re trying to build a retirement home with very little money, and if I had to put out $3,000 to remove tires, it would be a bad deal, man.”

As property owners, the Fraleys have several options, Strawn said, but none of them seem a good fit for their situation.

Options include paying to clean up the tires and filing a civil lawsuit against the dumpers to try to recover the cost, or cleaning the tired up themselves. Neither option is a good fit for the Fraleys physically or financially, John said.

On the borough’s end, officials intend to pursue the people who dumped the tires, Strawn said. Although the $150 fine that comes with the citation seems small, it can add up quickly considering that every day past the deadline to remove the tires can be considered another violation.

“It’s not just a one-time thing,” Strawn said of citing the violators. “We can continue to issue citations if we don’t see any progress made.”

The bottom line, Strawn said, is the tire dump is wrong and the Fraleys have every reason to be frustrated.

“You can’t just dump your trash on a neighbor’s property,” he said, adding this situation can be a good lesson for other property owners dealing with unwanted dumping.

It’s a complaint the borough hears a lot, he said. “Easily weekly. We have hundreds of cases like this (a year). Every case is unique. We see many junk and trash cases where it’s one person depositing trash or junk on another’s property.”

This case is a little different, though, in that the borough found the person who dumped the tires, and that person admitted to doing the deed, Strawn said.

“That’s not always the case,” he said. “We relay on the best evidence we can collect. We don’t have a crime lab or anything, but we can collect information and talk to witnesses and take information that way.”

Any assistance the borough or community can provide in helping get the tires removed so the Fraleys can sell their property would be appreciated, John said, adding the solution seems easy in his eyes.

“They admitted they brought them over here and threw them on the property,” he said. “The borough should pick them up and give them back.”

Contact Greg Johnson at 352-2269 or greg.johnson@frontiersman.com.