There was a long list of problems but few potential solutions for a couple of Calhoun Community residents who came to the Jones County Board of Supervisors meeting asking for help dealing with unruly residents nearby.
“It’s bad when you have to be armed just to sit on your front porch,” Scott Perkins told supervisors. “It’s ridiculous.”
Perkins and fellow Rose Lane resident Jeannie Reeves talked about problems associated with residents at a nearby trailer park owned by Phillip and Rhonda Odom. The complaints ranged from raw sewage coming from the mobile homes to burning household garbage despite trash bins being on the property to loud music and cars “racing up and down the road at 100 mph” to strangers wandering onto their property at all hours to gunshots being fired from vehicles in the area.
“All of the neighbors are in fear because of all the crap that goes on down there,” Perkins said. “They’re all afraid of retaliation.”
One nearby resident has an 18-year-old autistic daughter who trailer-park occupants have “tried to lure over, so she can’t even play in her front yard,” Reeves said.
Sheriff Joe Berlin said his department gets called out there “two or three times a night,” but the bad activities resume as soon as they leave, Perkins said. JCSD records show that deputies have gone there “hundreds of times” in one year, Berlin said. He suggested that the residents go to chancery court and file a nuisance complaint.
There are no ordinances against most of the complaints that the residents have, Supervisor Larry Dykes said. The only way for officials to have any control over what people do on residential property is for the people to vote on it, he noted.
“That would probably turn out like the dog-leash law vote did years ago — voted down horribly,” he said.
The area has been a problem for many years, said Dykes, who served as sheriff at the turn of the century through 2007. He has placed 30 mph speed-limit signs and a “Slow, Children” sign in the area, all to no avail.
“I’ve talked to the owner many times,” he said, adding “There are some good people out there who just don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Perkins and Reeves agreed, and both said that the Odoms need to be held accountable for their renters.
“Drugs are in and out of here at all hours,” she said. “Somebody is going to get killed.”
Reeves said she reported the raw sewage to state health department officials months ago but still hasn’t received a reply. Board President Phil Dickerson said he would get in touch with a contact he has at the state agency to try to assist with that effort.
A short time later in the meeting, supervisors responded to a garbage-fee exemption request Bobby Lindsey made by letter. He indicated that he wasn’t paying it because he burns his household garbage, Dykes said.
Chief Financial Officer Charles Miller and Emma Peacock of the Garbage Department pointed out that it was illegal to burn household garbage.
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