NEW City County Observer Series “Let’s Fix That”

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    GeorgeStating today the City County Observer shall be running a series entitled “LET’S FIX IT.”  The article is written by well known political activist George Lumley  from Vanderburgh County.

    George is married 31 years to wife Nancy.  They have two grown children.  He is a semi-retired Certified Public Accountant.  He graduated from Indiana University with a B.S. in Business Management with honors.  He was Honorably Discharged from the U.S. Air Force and Kentucky Air National Guard (non- combat role).

    Past work experiences include Auditor for the State Board of Accounts and management positions in manufacturing, utility construction, and transportation.

    Finally George is a self proclaimed “champion of the underdog and the little guy“.  We hope you will enjoy this detailed and eye opening article about blight in our community by George Lumley.

    Tax sale for Blighted Properties Re-defined In Senate Enrolled Act No. 415

    By George LUMLEY

    Sounds terribly quiet.  Is no one in Vanderburgh County/City of Evansville working on this?  All the fuss last year about the tax sale properties, tax sale zombie homes being sold and resold by the county and now no one here is showing interest in pursuing the legislated fix to the problem before another tax sale?  Maybe I am just out of the loop?

    Are you familiar with the pictures of the falling down houses and stories of tax sale nightmares?  When I say falling down I don’t mean a little ragged looking.  Chimneys are actually falling off, roofs are caving in, and walls are falling against neighboring houses.  Many of these houses are the tax sale nightmares that have been sold for taxes over and over with some people getting the very last of the useful life from the dwelling and the final owner left holding the bag.  The trash bag that is.

    Save these houses you say.  People could use them.  Some of them, yes, but many are just too used up and rotted away to save. Like the Styrofoam cups I seem to accumulate from buying an occasional soda with a fill-up, there are so many. They are cheap, and no one wants them. There is no economical reason to wash and repair them. It is a throwaway society with new being more desirable and often cheaper than repairing the old.

    At some point trash has to be recognized as trash and hauled to the dump.  And who is going to pay for that?  We are talking about a nightmare zombie house, it’s a pipe dream if you think the last owner has money saved up for this final burial expense.  Just like the couch and other trash in the alley, it becomes a government job and our collective expense.  No need to point the finger and find every excuse, legal and otherwise, to avoid the expense and push it down the road to someone else’s budget.  The asset is used up.  It’s time to haul the trash off and put the bill in the accounts payable pile.

    Why am I hearing about the city’s cost of maintaining these abandoned properties and all the related government expense of fire runs, police runs, etc. but little about fixing the problem – getting rid of the structures?  Why nothing about how we are going to use this grand legislative overhaul of the tax sale process related to the vacant and blighted homes to quit selling them at the tax sale and actually solve the problem by taking possession of and eliminating them.

    One of several provisions of Senate Enrolled Act No. 415 provides that some vacant or abandoned properties, the tax sale zombies, can be pulled from the regular tax sale after the May 10th tax payment deadline, and sold by the County Auditor at auction after a 30 day notice.  And it provides that the County Auditor issue a deed at that time conveying a fee simple interest to the buyer.  There is no waiting and the buyer takes possession while the prior owner has no right to redeem.  Could we be selling those properties right now?  No summer mowing cost?  Why not?  Sounds simple, why are we not doing that?

    I volunteered to help and attended a public meeting on blight in April sponsored by the Department of Metropolitan Development.  The blight problem was blamed in part on the tax sale law.  I offered the idea that this new SB 415 would give the city new effective tools to remove that perceived roadblock and the city should plan for its passage.  This was dismissed quickly with a statement indicating that the bill had no hope of passing.  The meeting seemed to me to be merely a sales pitch for funding a public land bank.

    Let’s fix that.  Speak up and ask the candidates and elected or appointed officials why we are not using the tools available to fight the vacant and abandoned home issue plaguing some of our neighborhoods.  Ask why city/county officials are thumbing their nose at this tax sale reform rather than grabbing ahold and running with it for the betterment of this area.

    Can you help me?

    Sincerely

    George Lumley

     

    Posted without editing, opinion, or bias

    RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

    17 COMMENTS

    1. Blight elimination is fundamental if we are to address Evansville’s quality of life issues. Substandard and dilapidated houses are unhealthy and unsafe for those who stay there – and when vacant – the staging places for crime and other nefarious activities. They are unsightly – and tend to drag other homes in the neighborhood down with them. The downward spiral of one house – can spread to blocks and eventually – the decay of a city.
      Widened streets and bike-ways are no substitute for the true re-vitalization of our neighborhoods.

      The City administration suffers from a chronic case of inertia at rest. Existing momentums – (minuscule as they might be) are treasured and protected by those who benefit from business as usual. New ways of thinking – doing – or slight changes in direction are met with grinding friction and moans of terror.
      We must not accept the excuse: – “That’s the way we’ve always done it” – ever again.

      The tools and methods contained in SEA 415 – are more than an option – they are the way of the future – if we are serious about quality of life issues – in our expansive blighted neighborhoods – and indeed Evansville as a whole.

      Welcome! George Lumely
      Yes! – we will help you. …

    2. If I read your opinion correctly your solution to fixing this problem is for the city to buy these homes an tear them down. That has been what we have been doing for at least a decade. All it seems you are proposing is a way to speed up the process. Sounds good but the city does not have enough resources to tear down what they own now. I also see nothing about what caused the blith. The reason these homes fell in disrepair is they cannot be maintained for what they are worth. The reason they are not worth maintaining is due to government an banking policies during the seventies that destroyed these neighborhoods. It is not reasonable to put hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain a hundred year old victorian when the government is insisting on affordable housing in your neighborhood. The affordable housing is not worth the money it cost either. As a home owner in one of these neighborhoods I have been faced with these dilemmas for thirty years. The home owners who are keeping there properties up are old retired people who paid off their homes years ago and can not sell. I do not know how to fix this problem, but vacant lots do not pay taxes. They do breed crime and weeds.

      • “If I read your opinion correctly your solution to fixing this problem is for the city to buy these homes an tear them down.”

        I read it differently, stonedreamer. It seems to me like Mr. Lumley wants to fast-track these properties to auction. Not sure why he thinks a private buyer suddenly want a falling down property when it had been unable to be sold previously at a tax sale?

        Also, as far as this wording in the introduction to the article:

        “He was Honorably Discharged from the U.S. Air Force and Kentucky Air National Guard (non- combat role).”

        I suggest it be changed to this:

        “He was Honorably Discharged from the U.S. Air Force and Kentucky Air National Guard.”

        The fact is about 99% of our veterans did not serve in a ‘combat role’, but they still served honorably, and no asterisk is needed.

      • Many owners of Vacant lots do indeed pay taxes.

        It is not fair that “The home owners who are keeping there properties up are old retired people who paid off their homes years ago and can not sell.” because the city will not haul off the trash next door.

        The city does buy some of these homes to tear them down. Why? If they have the resources why not spend it tearing down the ones they can get for free?

        Crime and weeds on the lot itself is minor compared to the lot with a Vacant house.

        The city has resources, they may not have cash, they may be broke, but we can find the funding to provide the one of the most basic functions of government: hauling off the trash.

        Stay tuned for the answers to the problem in future articles.

    3. Good article on an important topic. Demolition is the right solution for many of the 10,000 blighted homes that Evansville has. The real problem though is that for every home that the City tears down in a given year, three more fall into squalor. It is like bailing water out of a sinking boat with a thimble. The good efforts being made are not sufficient to hold back the tide.

      An interesting twist would be to identify dilapidated homes that are economically feasible to repair and get them into private hands. As long as it costs $90,000 to repair a house that will be worth $50,000 when you are done private money will not participate.

      The demand is not happening as long as the population is stagnant and Jagoe or others like them are delivering new homes for just over $100k.

    4. Interesting, but as I read it I had similar thoughts as Stonedreamer. Possessing the property is one thing, but it is another to remove the structure. We have sold off our ability to deal with blight to an arena, parking lot, pancake motel, Earthcare enviromental snake oil, $450,000 CVS, McCurdy deterioration by attrition project…

      BUt I like the idea of the series and conversation. These are issues that Winnecke and Reiken need to be forced to address in their campaigns.

    5. Well. This city got a large grant to demo blight and spent it evicting folks and clearing the new D-Pat lot instead. Until you address THAT underlying corruption and money grab this column is nothing but yawns.
      I used to like this site….

      • letsallgetalong
        Corruption and money grabbing are not only standing between us and blight elimination – corruption is the main reason for the “pall over Evansville.” When the Citizenry is poorly represented by our elected leaders – civic apathy and neglectfulness flourish – blighted neighborhoods – brain drain and low voter turn out are the result.
        I submit that corrupt leadership – wielding bad policy – for self enrichment –
        is Evansville’s primary problem. …

      • Letsallgetalong, I wish I could fix that. Your example is one of many. Funds become available but are they utilized wisely or in this case possibly even legally?

    7. How easy is it to build a new house on a 25-35 foot wide lot after the old structure is demolished? Has the city made it easier than it was 15 years ago when I inquired about doing it? At that time, I was advised to buy an adjoining house, demo it, hire a city licensed contractor to do what I could easily do myself (build it), and all would be good. Needless to say, that structure’s demise was eventually paid for by it’s owner, the city of Evansville.

    8. The wrecking ball is the fate of these older obsolete homes and will be as long as the population continues to shrink and the wages are stagnant.

    11. Then you have the mainstream media toting a pile of toxic rubble such as that Owen Block aberration. That things just a big ugly allergen spawning dump, and they expect people to live within its toxicity soaked closed environment walls again. It should have been demolished the old moldy foundation sealed and a new useful and by todays standards of living, and modern and efficient building placed there. The emotional attachment to the dump is just a cronies fueled burden to everyone in your town. The downtown grabby load of it, scores another win while in fact the revenue base just sees another huge ongoing loss allowed to continue to depredate an already useless outdated utilities infrastructure. Face it its an unhealthy living structure. Period.

      ab·er·ra·tion
      ˌabəˈrāSH(ə)n/
      noun
      r/.1 a departure from what is normal, usual, or expected, typically one that is unwelcome.
      “they described the outbreak of violence in the area as an aberration”
      synonyms: anomaly, deviation, departure from the norm, divergence, abnormality, irregularity, variation, digression, freak, rogue, rarity, oddity, peculiarity, curiosity, quirk; mistake
      “a statistical aberration”
      BIOLOGY
      r/.2 a characteristic that deviates from the normal type.
      “color aberrations”
      synonyms: anomaly, deviation, departure from the norm, divergence, abnormality, irregularity, variation, digression, freak, rogue, rarity, oddity, peculiarity, curiosity, quirk; mistake
      “a statistical aberration”

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