Enforce the rules.

Those three words uttered by Councilman Richard Silverman and embraced unanimously by his colleagues gave Manteca’s code enforcement officers their marching orders when it comes to residential front and corner yard fences.

The directive at least week’s council meeting means the ordinance will stand as it is with enforcement to resume. That means a number of homeowners in the coming months may receive notices that their fences are in violation of city rules and must be removed or modified.

While the city will continue to enforce the fence rules along with all other property use restrictions by complaint only, they will no longer simply address fence complaints that pose safety issues as they were directed to do so three years ago be elected officials.

That means anyone complaining about a neighbor who has a front yard fence higher than the code maximum of 36 inches or a corner yard fence higher than 42 inches can expect the city to enforce the rules.

The fence rules were brought back to the council for direction since staff has been receiving a significant number of complaints from more and more Manteca residents complaining about the fences their neighbors are putting up specifically in their front and side yards. The top complaint is that the illegal fences under city code are trashing neighborhood aesthetics followed by creating safety issues.