By DAVE SCHULTZ
When the city put some muscle into its junk ordinance, adding fines for failure to comply with cleanup orders, the decision was made to limit the fines to $25 a day. The reason for that was to give property owners some motivation to get the work done without placing them under an onerous financial burden.
That effort hasn’t been entirely successful, because the owners of three properties on the city’s south side have still not complied with the order — and the amount of the fines have gone into four digits.
The properties at 122 W. South St. and 314 W. Cherry St. are both 56 days past the compliance deadline, so the cumulative fines on each of them are $1,400 as of Tuesday afternoon’s meeting of the Bluffton Board of Public Works and Safety. The property at 417 N. Williams St. is 49 days past the compliance deadline, leading to cumulative fines of $1,225.
Richard Triplett, Bluffton’s building commissioner, brought copies of the failure to comply orders he issued for the three sites. Triplett said that two of the properties — on Williams Street and on Cherry Street — are owner-occupied. The South Street property is obviously not occupied, he said.
Triplett listed the owners of the properties as Ricky A. Perry Jr. on Williams Street, Travis R. Watson and Stephanie M. Watson on Cherry Street, and John R. Bauer on South Street.
Board members asked Triplett if he has had any contact with the property owners and he said no. He said “a small amount of work” had been done at 417 N. Williams St., but more needs to be done.
In a related issue, Mayor John Whicker — who serves as a member of the Board of Works with Scott Mentzer and Josh Hunt — said Huntington attorney Adrian Halverstadt would be filing a lawsuit soon to move the matter of 427 W. Lancaster St. ahead, in terms of city employees or contractors coming onto private property to clean it up.
The property has been under scrutiny for several months and some progress had been made — even through the matter had been complicated by an additional citation from the Wells County Health Department declaring the structure unfit for habitation. Progress has been made on that front.
Whicker referred to Halverstadt’s filing as a “test case.” Assuming the city wins the case, the revised junk ordinance will be enforceable and cleanup — with applicable liens — will follow.
No action was taken by the board on the three properties Triplett brought to the board at the beginning of the meeting.
daves@news-banner.com
