Landowners take supervisor to task over cattle escape

Mar. 12—OTTUMWA — It's been five years, and John Courtney and Chad Black have heard and seen enough.

The two Green Township landowners during Tuesday's meeting lamented to Wapello County supervisor Bryan Ziegler and the rest of the board about Ziegler's cattle straying from his property, wandering onto theirs and blocking roadways.

It's evidently not a new issue, and Center Township trustees John Burger and Jerry Angle served as fence viewers of property in the township in November. Fence line needs repaired, they told the board, but there has been miscommunication along the way to try to get it fixed. Burger and Angle served as fence viewers because of Ziegler's conflict of interest with family members serving on the Green Township trustees board.

"I'll be brutally honest, but there's been no communication on this. This is really the first communication we've had," Angle said. "There was confusion whether it was just going to be a viewing or whether it was going to be a completed case, and it was going to be case by case with each landowner.

"We're just looking for direction."

Ziegler was asked about his role with the situation of his cattle, and was reserved at first, saying "it'll get taken care of soon." However, in an email to The Courier following the meeting, he was more forceful.

"This should never have come up at this meeting. I have not seen the fence viewing report from fourth months ago and should have seen it within 30 days," he said. "The reason that adjacent landowners have not pursued this is they know that it will cost them money to repair their fences.

"This is about to be over with as I have hired a contractor to remove the cows. I continue to fix some neighbors' fences as they are not able to, but those neighbors weren't at the meeting to speak."

Courtney had heard the same story for years, he said. He said he recently installed a new septic system for $25,000 and Ziegler's cattle are already doing damage to it when they trample onto his property.

"I don't have any adjoining land, but yet I have to build a fence all the way around my property to keep his cows out," he said. "I've had this conversation with Bryan quite a few times. It's been years now, and nothing's getting done. So what's going to get done?

Black said there is about three or four miles of fence line that needs repaired, and figured it would cost at $250,000 because "you're probably going to have to have a dozer clear 75% of the land to access it."

He estimated it affected 11 properties.

"It's a lot of fence, and not any of it is good," Black said.

Though it's not part of Iowa Code, when there is a fence dispute, landowners have been known to follow the "right-hand rule." Under that rule, neighboring landowners enter into a property line agreement and build and maintain portion of a fence to the right of the midpoint of the property, roughly a 50-50 split.

It was determined that letters would be mailed to each landowner affected.

"I think what I would like is a bullet point of what actually needs to be done, and what grounds do we have as supervisors to get this matter taken care of," supervisor Brian Morgan said. "We started this in November and we all want it taken care of."

The cattle straying from Ziegler's property falls under habitual trespassing, county attorney Reuben Neff said. In that case, under Iowa Code, neighboring landowners can request to the other landowner to build a fence. If it doesn't take place within 30 days, they can then request fence viewers who walk the properties. Burger said it took two days to do the task and "we walked every foot. This is going to be a big project."

"Fence viewing don't typically get this far just because typically they get handled on the front end by the landowners," Neff said.

However, Ziegler claimed those other landowners have other grievances.

"One of the guys that spoke has an illegal fence that the sheriff ignores to enforce," Ziegler said without identifying which landowner. "The other guy that spoke has a mother that has a fence against me that she refused to fix.

"I think people are jealous of my success," he said. "There are other issues that we as the county need to be working on."

— Chad Drury can be reached at cdrury@ottumwacourier.com, and on Twitter @ChadDrury