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The lots can be found throughout the city.

Construction debris peppers the overgrown weeds that cover a vacant plot of land.

After complaints about Naples’ unkempt lots, the city is hoping revisions to a city ordinance will correct the problem.

The city’s Planning Advisory Board has recommended approval of revisions to city ordinances relating to property maintenance, specifically looking at vacant lot maintenance.

If the changes are approved by the Naples City Council, lots would need to be graded and covered with living plant material, Community Development Director Robin Singer said during a planning board meeting this past week.

Singer said her staff looked at regulations for several other coastal communities when coming up with proposed changes to the Naples ordinance.

And while ordinances from several Florida communities were included in the board’s packet, two of Naples’ closest neighbors were absent from the list.

Both Marco Island and Bonita Springs have ordinances that require property owners to maintain their property. Neither is as detailed as the one proposed in Naples.

The proposed revisions would ask that vacant lots be cleared, graded and covered with a living plant material within two months following demolition or after adoption of the ordinance.

The revisions also state that debris must be cleared from the site, and plant life must not exceed 8 inches in height.

That’s a 7-inch height difference from the Marco Island ordinance dealing with lot maintenance, said Eric Wardle, Marco Island’s chief of code complaints.

“The rules for vacant lots is the same for developed lots,” Wardle said.

Natural growth, more often described as weeds, can be 15 inches high before code enforcement gets involved, Wardle said.

And when it comes to keeping the lots covered, Wardle said it isn’t a concern.

“If it is a vacant lot, we don’t really ask them to cover it,” he said.

Bonita Springs has the same policy, said Dennis Mitchell, the city’s code enforcement supervisor.

“I don’t think we’re at the point that Naples is yet,” Mitchell said. “We don’t require (grass or plant life) if it’s a vacant lot.”

Naples City Manager Bob Lee said the decision to recommend that vacant lots be graded, cleared and covered in plant life came after the City Council asked Singer to look into what the city could do to prevent vacant lots from becoming an eyesore.

“The council initiated this,” he said. “From the aestethic standpoint, they wanted to know what we should be doing.”

According to a memo from Singer to the city’s planning board, the department originally wanted to have property owners clear, grade and cover the land with sod or other “cultivated plant material.”

“The research did not find any other community with as strict a policy as what has been proposed,” Singer wrote in her memo. “In fact, some communities, such as the City of Jupiter, have an exemption for native materials.”

According to the Jupiter ordinance, overgrown lots are considered a public nuisance, but vacant lots “possessing significant amounts of native vegetation” aren’t considered a nuisance.

In February, Singer said a consensus was taken that the city shouldn’t require lots to be covered with sod, or any other plant life that would require irrigation.

The same decision, Singer told PAB members, was made during a meeting of the President’s Council, a group made up of presidents of homeowner associations throughout Naples.

The President’s Council also voted 9-3 in favor of requiring properties be covered with a green living material.

Keeping those lots at 8 inches is meant to prevent overgrown properties, Lee said.

Wardle said his department sends out crews more than 10 times a week to handle overgrown lots.

“If weeds are too high, we post a notice and give the property owner seven days to cut it,” Wardle said.

If the property owner doesn’t comply, a crew is sent to trim the weeds and the owner is charged a $100 administrative fee.

But don’t think being flooded with calls is the reason the city is moving toward a stricter maintenance policy.

“I can’t say there’s lots of calls and complaints about this,” Lee said. “But unfortunately there’s some exceptions to the rule.”

It’s those exceptions, Lee said, that are prompting the changes.

“Most ordinances aren’t written for people who follow the rules,” he said.

The revisions are to go before the Naples City Council during a Sept. 5 meeting.