Marengo Wants New Rules for What Can Sit Outside. Here's What Would Change.

Marengo wants to tighten the rules for what can sit outside on a property, from boats and trailers to lumber piles and trash cans. The City Council takes its first look at the proposals Monday, August 10, after a first try on July 27 was postponed. Code Compliance Inspector Randy Schmitt, who wrote the package, was out that day, and City Administrator Derik Morefield told Marengo Weekly the item was held so Schmitt could take part in the discussion; the memo in the new packet says Schmitt will be there Monday. If the council likes what it hears, staff plan to bring the ordinance back for a formal adoption vote on August 24. The weeks in between are the window for residents to weigh in.

The proposals are the first piece of a larger cleanup of the city's municipal code. In 2025 the city hired a codification company, American Legal, to scrub the code for legal conflicts and outdated formatting. Alongside that work, city staff flagged parts of the code that need substantive updates, including subdivisions, zoning, building, signage, trees and landscaping, and nuisances, and chose code enforcement to go first. Code Compliance Inspector Randy Schmitt wrote the recommendations, drawing on experience enforcing Marengo's current rules and on practices in other communities. The city's stated goals: clearer language so property owners know what compliance looks like, more direct and measurable enforcement standards, better neighborhood appearance, sanitation, access, and public safety, consistent rules across residential, multifamily, and commercial properties, and a more efficient and defensible enforcement process.

Here is what would change, piece by piece.

What Counts as a Nuisance Gets Much Broader

Today, the provision being rewritten, one entry in the code's longer list of defined public nuisances, covers a single thing: unsheltered storage of unlicensed automobiles for 10 days or more. The proposed language covers almost any personal property left out in the open for 7 days if it is not registered, abandoned, discarded, unused, stripped, junked, wrecked, dismantled, scrapped, salvaged, or not in running or safe operating condition. The draft's own list: vehicles, boats, trailers, recreational vehicles and campers, machinery, implements, and equipment, lumber and wood, junk, trash and debris, paper, tires and batteries, furniture and appliances, building materials, plastics, metals, any other ferrous or nonferrous material, and "goods or articles of any kind."

The draft also defines what counts as acceptable shelter: a permanent structure enclosed on all sides, with a floor and a roof. A tarp, a carport, or a lean-to would not qualify.

In practical terms, an unregistered trailer beside the garage, a car that does not run, or building materials sitting out past a week could all fall under the new definition.

Nothing Parked or Stored in the Public Right-of-Way

A new provision would make it unlawful to park, place, or store any vehicle, trailer, recreational vehicle, boat, or other equipment in the public right-of-way at any time. The draft spells out what that includes: parking on the parkway or the grass between the street and sidewalk, leaving a trailer unhitched from its towing vehicle in the right-of-way, storing an RV, boat, camper, or utility trailer there, and parking anything in a way that blocks sidewalks, drainage, or sightlines for traffic. The same section also changes who issues encroachment permits: the draft's first sentence says they would come from the city administrator instead of the City Council, but a later line kept from the current code still says the Council "in its discretion, may issue or deny the permit." That wrinkle was in the July version of the draft and is still in the August one; squaring the two sentences is the kind of detail the discussion stage exists to catch.

Yard Parking Only on Approved Surfaces

The city already requires vehicles and trailers to be stored on concrete, asphalt, or patio blocks. The proposed addition closes the gap the current rule leaves open: no parking or storing vehicles, boats, trailers, or RVs on grass, dirt, or "gravel not approved by the City" anywhere in a residential yard.

Trash Cans: The Size Cap Came Out

Residential garbage cans already have to be watertight, metal or plastic, and covered under the current code. The July version of this proposal added a size range, 5 to 35 gallons, and that range raised an obvious question. MDC Environmental Services, the residential hauler listed on the city's utilities page, provides 64- and 95-gallon carts; read literally, the range would have ruled out both. Marengo Weekly put the question to the city the morning of July 27, and City Administrator Derik Morefield replied that staff "will take a look at it."

The version in the August 10 packet has no size range. Homes with fewer than four units would instead be required to use the receptacles "as prescribed in the city's residential refuse agreement," and a new definition elsewhere in the package draws the commercial line at containers over 95 gallons, which leaves the carts residents actually roll to the curb on the right side of it. What stays: commercial containers would still be banned for regular weekly garbage pickup at homes served by curbside collection.

Dumpsters Get Screening Requirements, With More Ways to Comply

This section was also reworked between drafts. The July version required an enclosure six feet tall on three sides, built of wood or chain-link fencing with slats, permitted and installed within 90 days of notification, with a four-foot cap near intersections. The August version drops the fixed height, the intersection cap, and the 90-day clock. Instead, dumpsters of a cubic yard or more would need to sit on an approved hard surface, be serviced by an authorized hauler, be kept clean, and be screened from public view, with several ways to get there: a solid fence, wall, or masonry enclosure on at least three sides, a chain-link fence with privacy slats, evergreen shrubs, hedges, or approved landscaping, or a combination.

The new version also bans dumpsters outright at single-family, two-family, and three-family homes, and adds rules for temporary roll-off containers, the kind that show up for a roof job or a cleanout: private property only unless the city says otherwise, no blocking streets or sidewalks, a 30-day limit unless extended, removal when the work is done, and if the job requires a building permit, the permit has to be issued before the container is placed.

And One Fireworks Fix

The package also picked up a small amendment staff identified in the past couple of weeks: the memo says the code's fireworks section conflicts with state statute, and the revision adjusts what the city administrator and police chief may permit from a "public display" of fireworks to a "display."

Where a Violation Would Land

Citations under rules like these are the kind that can end up in the city's own administrative hearing process, the code court we walked through in July: Marengo Has Its Own Code Court. Here's What to Know if a Citation Lands. Fines there have mostly run $50 to $250.

Questions the Draft Leaves Open

The staff memo highlights three passages, specifically, as needing further discussion: the definition of acceptable shelter (the permanent-structure-with-floor-and-roof language), the entire new yard-parking rule, and the detailed list of what the right-of-way ban covers. Those are the same three passages flagged in the July version. The broadened nuisance definition itself, including the 7-day window and the long list of covered property, is not among them. Staff say they can revise the language based on council input before bringing it back for the adoption vote. A few things worth listening for as the proposal moves:

• How the qualifying words would be read in practice. The definition reaches property that is "unused," not only property that is junked or inoperable, and the draft does not say what separates an unused item from an ordinary one that happens to be sitting outside. Another qualifier, "not registered," is hard to apply to most of the list, since lumber, furniture, and appliances have no registration to begin with. The city's stated goal for this rewrite is language property owners can understand, which makes these the words most worth pinning down before adoption.
• Whether 7 days is workable for an active home project, a renovation, or a for-sale listing in the driveway.
• What makes gravel "approved," and whether existing gravel driveways and parking pads are grandfathered in.
• What the timeline is for bringing an existing, unscreened dumpster into compliance. The July draft gave 90 days from notification; the August draft sets no deadline at all, and does not say whether existing setups are grandfathered.

How to Weigh In

The council discusses the package Monday, August 10, at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 132 E. Prairie Street, with the adoption vote planned for the August 24 meeting. Public comment on an agenda item is taken during consideration of that item. Before then, City Hall can be reached at 815-568-7112.

One caveat on the fine print: at the same August 10 meeting, the council is set to adopt the city's recodified municipal code, the American Legal project mentioned above, and the staff memo warns that every chapter and section number cited here will have changed by the time the amendments come back for adoption. The final language may also differ from the draft described above.

Sources: July 27, 2026 City Council packet (posted July 23, amended July 24) and August 10, 2026 City Council packet (posted August 6), Discussion Agenda Supplements and draft ordinances amending Chapters 6, 12, 13, 15, 22, and 43 of the Marengo Municipal Code; existing code language as quoted in the supplements; correspondence with the city administrator; Marengo Weekly reporting on the city's administrative adjudication court.