CHARLEMONT — After a yearslong effort mandating that Stagecoach Auto Repair remove the more than 200 unregistered “junk cars” it has stored along its 80-acre site on Route 8A, the Conservation Commission voted unanimously to draft a letter to owner Brian Dupree mandating that he remove more vehicles from his property.

Last year, the commission drafted an enforcement order on the property amid concerns of the vehicles’ proximity to Mill Brook. According to Conservation Commission Chair Thorne Palmer, Stagecoach Auto Repair has, under the commission’s order that the company remove 12 vehicles per month, removed about 72 vehicles already.

This month, however, Palmer said Dupree only removed seven vehicles from the property. This prompted, at the Selectboard’s request, a letter mandating he remove 19 vehicles next month to stay in compliance with the commission’s mandate.

“In the past four months, he’s removed 16 more cars than he needed to stay within the order. This month he’s behind by five,” Palmer explained. “I feel like he’s still moving ahead, because this month he removed something, but we have to stay on top of him because I don’t want it to start sliding like this every month.”

Other commissioners, such as William Harker, are less than pleased with the pace at which the owner has been clearing the property.

“This goes back four or five years,” Harker said. “This is not ending, this is going on for years and years and years. … The point I’m trying to get across is you can’t be soft on him.”

Dupree has run a business for 35 years repairing and towing vehicles, and submitted an application for a Class III permit more than 10 years ago that would allow for unregistered vehicles on the lot. He was informed two years ago that the permit was not approved and he refused to apply again, since he had already paid the fees for the permit when it was rejected.

The business owner took over the Class II permit for the automotive repair and towing business from his father when he died about 30 years ago.

In an interview Friday morning, Dupree said that although he has been able to exceed the order requirements in previous months, his company’s other business ventures have been in full swing recently, making it difficult to juggle the task of clearing vehicles with day-to-day business operations. Dupree added that the order has placed significant financial strain on his business.

“We were a little behind because we do all the maintenance and repairs for Berkshire East Mountain Resort and Crab Apple [Whitewater],” Dupree said. “We just had to keep the other businesses in town functioning so we were not doing as much as we usually do. … It’s kind of hard to scrap cars and not make the income I need to pay my bills, so at one point I’ve got to do my work in the shop in order to pay my taxes.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.