Residents speak out on tax-delinquent properties during Highland County land bank meeting

A report on legal and compliance updates led to feedback, particularly regarding tax-delinquent properties, from several concerned citizens during the Highland County Land Reutilization Corporation (land bank)’s Thursday, Sept. 19 meeting.

This was the board’s first regular meeting since July. Although the land bank board’s attorney Todd Book was unable to attend due to illness, land bank coordinator Jason Johansen said Book is working on previously discussed recommendations for deed restriction enforcement with various homeowners’ associations, particularly in the Rocky Fork Lake area.

President Skip Henderson and member Craig Rambo, representatives from one such HOA — the Highland Holiday Association — were in attendance Thursday. Rambo said that at the suggestion of land bank board member and Highland County commission president David Daniels, the HOA issued letters to “five of our worst properties” and that two of them are now “potentially for sale.”

Rambo told the land bank that the problem parcels involved various alleged issues, including trash and other health hazards, lack of utilities and squatters. The county’s sewer billing clerk Kristie Alexander, who was in attendance Thursday, advised that the Health Department is following up on several of the properties.

“We haven't been shy into sharing that we're working with you folks, and I think that evoked some response, positive, leading to the two sales,” Rambo said.

Rambo shared a packet with information on properties to Johansen, which land bank board president Terry Britton said Book would need to “review to make sure that all the legal stuff is fully aligned.”

Another resident, as well as a land bank board member, both expressed concerns with the HCLRC getting involved with deed restriction enforcement.

Resident Arleen McGarvey said she was “ashamed” that the land bank “has to come in and clean it up where the board wasn't doing it” when homeowners “pay dues for the board to make sure that people keep [up] their properties.”    

HCLRC board member Lauren Walker had a similar thought, as she said she didn’t think this issue “should be a land bank problem.

“Is the HOA always going to have to have a legal battle, or is there an attorney representing the HOA that can help clean up these properties?” Walker asked. “There has to be some kind of enforcement for the properties if it's on the HOA, and I don't feel that should be a land bank problem. We are focused more on tax-delinquent properties, vacant land, and I understand that we want to clean up these properties, but if you have an HOA, why isn't there an enforcement with that?”

Rambo, who said that he was retired from “the development business,” told Walker that his “humble opinion” is that HOAs do not have fees that would cover the cost of enforcement, and if they tried to raise the fees, the proposal would be “voted down.

“The homeowner’s fee in the community I'm in is $120 for the year,” he said. “To expand the fees to something significant that allows the community to hire attorneys is a long way off. That would require a number of properties that are sitting fallow to be improved, and frankly, my opinion is the county is allowing properties with taxes exceeding several thousand dollars to sit uncollected.

“Part of my viewpoint is that the county is part of the source of the problem, and there should be some responsibility to help this community by collecting the taxes or forcing those properties who are not paying taxes to collect to pay up, because the rest of us are paying taxes. It's a potentially really great community, but uncollected taxes is a challenge that we can't solve.”

McGarvey said that the HOA board has not “followed through” on threats to “foreclose or put a lien on” properties. However, Henderson pointed out that in many cases, the property owners have passed away, and finding the correct individuals to contact is challenging.

“To put a lien on a property down there, I have to win a case,” he said. “I can't win the case if the people don't show up for court because they haven't received the proper documentation.”

Britton said, “It sounds to me like it’s a pretty vicious cycle.

“We'll get with our attorney and see what we can actually do here,” Britton said. “To the statement that you made about the collecting the taxes, we have a lot of delinquencies throughout the county, not just at the lake, but throughout the whole county. That's a pretty big job for anybody.”

Then, also on the topic of tax-delinquent properties and and concerns with cleaning up parcels, resident Richard Counter asked to speak. He accused the county of not being “interested in collecting” delinquent taxes.

Counter said that he has been trying to get help from the land bank since May 2021, “three directors ago,” on parcels in Madison Township.

“There's nobody interested in collecting taxes, but you're interested in collecting taxes from us that pay it,” Counter said. “About a year ago, it was brought up again here at the land bank that we could do a couple of things. We’d ask the health board to help us. We'd ask the siblings that are in line for the property to give it away, give it to us, the land bank. And a question was raised there by one of the commissioners, if a foreclosure could be done simultaneously, to be asking for the siblings to give up the property. Todd’s answer then was yes.

“We’ve asked the health board to help us, and they've said, no, they won’t do that. I don't know where that ever went. We’ve got a gal over in Greenfield that's trying to communicate with the siblings to give it up. But we haven't gone through the process of simultaneously foreclosed on.”

Counter pointed out that either way it is a “win,” if you “enact a foreclosure” and the heirs “pay the taxes” or if they don’t and the county successfully forecloses.

“I don't understand why we don't go after a win,” Counter said. “Why do we just sit?

“I’ve written letters. I've come to many meetings. I haven't seen anything get traction yet.”

Counter told the board, “Say it out — you don’t have to pay your taxes because we're not going to run after you anyway.”

Britton pointed out that the foreclosure process has to go through the Highland County Prosecutor’s Office and that “another issue” is that the legal process for foreclosures “takes a long time.”

“Then fund the prosecutor’s office,” Counter said. “Have somebody, or a couple of people in there. They're going to pay their way in pursuing taxes, but they're going to tell you that they don't have the funding to sit down and start pursuing delinquent taxes.”

Johansen said he agreed that “more foreclosures need to be taking place,” adding it is “frustrating” that there have not been more foreclosures, but as a land bank they can “only do what we can do.”

Johansen also explained to Counter that they ran into issues with the Madison Township parcels. He said that they later found that the property “couldn’t go through a foreclosure and put it through our demolition program,” while the land bank was wanting to use grant funds to clean up the parcels because they are estimated to cost over $26,000 to clean up.

“If we didn't put it through our demolition program, that was a cost we were going to have to bear,” Johansen said.

As previously reported, the owner of the land died without a will and has multiple surviving relatives, so the matter needs to go through probate court. The land bank cannot obtain grant funds without having legal access to the property.

Regarding the suggestion that the Health Department could assist, Highland County Prosecutor Anneka Collins wrote to the land bank officials earlier this year and advised, “The Health Department cannot just declare a place a ‘nuisance’ and then tell the Land Bank to go clean it up.”

Counter said there is “no end in sight” on fixing the parcels. “I’m tired of cleaning it up,” he said.

In other discussion:

• The board took two action on two previously discussed properties, voting to become the receivers of a parcel in Leesburg in court and accepting the donation of a different property in Paint Township.

The board had voted in July to become the receiver of 21 South Fairfield Street in Leesburg. On Thursday, they also agreed to become the receiver of 125-1/2 West Main Street.

In June, then-Leesburg Village Administrator Amy Palmer said it was a “trailer property” with an estimated demolition cost of $6,700.

“We were doing some extra research on this one,” Johansen said. “It has a mobile home. We just wanted to make sure that there were no outstanding mortgages on the mobile home.

“After discussion with Todd, he did say we could move forward and be the receivers of that property, and then we would clean it up, have whatever needs demoed, and then we would turn around to sell it. That's how we would recoup our money from whatever we spend on on that property.”

The other parcel accepted by the board was a donation of 10635 North Shore Road in the Enchanted Hills subdivision in Paint Township. The land is valued at $7,100, and it has $29,211.58 in back taxes owed. Johansen said in July that the land bank will also be responsible for paying $11,228 to the county for the sewer grinder.

“There is a mobile home on the property,” Johansen said. “We're working to have [the former owners] remove it before we acquire it, as it's not in the name of the property owner. It is in a family member's name, but of course, we don't want possession of this mobile home, and so we've asked him to try to have them remove it from the property before we take possession.”

Johansen said the parcel is “pretty overgrown” but “in a good location” in an area with recent commercial development.

“Like I said last meeting, it's pretty undervalued, I think,” he said. “I think it would be a pretty hot commodity out there [at Rocky Fork Lake].”

• Johansen opened bids for a third attempt on Package 10 of the 2024 iteration of the Building Demolition and Site Revitalization Grant program.

As previously reported, the board approved a recommendation from Johansen to remove bid package No. 10 and to re-bid two of the structures in the package at their July meeting. This is the second re-bid attempt.

The HCLRC received nine bids, ranging from a combined $22,740 (Evans Landscaping) up to $93,800 (O’Rourke Wrecking Company) for the two parcels at 205 and 213 South Broadway St. in Lynchburg.

Other contractors submitting bids were Baumann Enterprises, KMB Demolition & Excavating,  Lamb Brothers Trucking & Excavating, Reed Mechanical Construction, Rippstein’s Excavating, Victory Excavating & Demolition and Zeuch Construction.

“We can't award anything yet,” Johansen said. “e’re still waiting on the Department of Development to get back to us on our applications. That's on the Brownfield side and on the demolition side. Once we have approval, our application's good to go, we'll probably call a special meeting. We can get in here, get everyone awarded, and then we'll sign the contracts. We'll do their 10-day EPA notifications, and then shortly after, they should be able to get started.”

At the time of the meeting Thursday, the state had not made any announcements in relation to their two grant programs, the Building Demolition and Site Revitalization or the Brownfield Remediation Program. However, on Friday, the Governor’s Office released lists of awards for both programs, and Highland County was not among the counties receiving funds with this round.

As previously reported, the HCLRC submitted 41 properties for the state Building Demolition and Site Revitalization grant program and is seeking both the $500,000 set-aside and an additional $150,000 from the state, committing a $50,000 match for a total of $700,000.

The land bank board is also seeking funding to continue work at the Rocky Fork Truck Stop, as well as to clean up a parcel containing an underground storage tank in East Monroe, a former gas station in Hillsboro and a former machine shop in Greenfield through the Brownfield program.

Johansen said that they received, and returned, a cure letter from ODOD on their Brownfield application for the East Monroe property.

“We needed to have the owner sign a clean hands affidavit that just states that he didn't contribute or cause the environmental issue if there is one at that site,” Johansen said. “We also obtained a letter of support from Fairfield Township trustees.

“[The state] had some questions on the actual location of the project, because there is no specific address, and it's on East Monroe Road, but it has a state Route 28 address, which was the East Monroe mill, so there was a bunch of confusion there.”

Johansen said they “clarified” the state’s questions and submitted the updated information Monday.

“We do expect to have some other cure letters for the other Brownfield projects — same thing, letters of support, clean hands affidavit,” he said. “Those are required. Rocky Ford Truck Stop may not need those, since we've already done work there, and they should have those on file.

“We’re just waiting on them to give us the green light so that we can move forward on these projects.”

• Johansen also updated the board on three other properties. The land bank has officially acquired 11923 Elmhurst Trail in Paint Township, which was donated to the HCLRC. Johansen said the parcel needs cleaned up with “a good Bush Hog,” removal of some trees and removal of a single-wide mobile home. The land bank also has to pay $4,367.96 for sewer grinder installation, he said.

Another parcel at 326-1/2 North East Street in Hillsboro, which has also been presented as a potential donation, is still being “worked through,” Johansen said. As noted in July, two liens were found on the property, but Johansen said Thursday that one has “lapsed by operation of law” and the other is with a “land contract that was never fulfilled” between former owners.

“Hopefully next meeting, I should be able to be able to have a motion to approve to accept that as a donation, but we’re not quite there,” Johansen said. “We just need to have those things taken care of.”

The third parcel mentioned by Johansen was a property at 11470 Spruance Road in Marshall Township, which was submitted in April to the Highland County Prosecutor’s Office as an expedited foreclosure case.

“We're going to reach out and discuss it with the Marshall Township trustees,” Johansen said. “They have an interest in that property. We've explained to the prosecutor office that we believe there's underground storage tanks there. They're not reported on BUSTR [the Bureau of Underground Storage Tank Regulations], but that could possibly be because the tanks were there before BUSTR was invented.”

Britton said that according to his conversation with the previous owner’s son-in-law, “they used to sell gas” at a store on the property, and they are “pretty sure” the gas tanks are still there.

“We also have heard that there's a mobile home on the property full of tires, and both of those are environmental issues that we get grant funding to deal with those types of situations,” Johansen said. “It does look like they are pretty interested, according to the prosecutor's office, in that property. We're going to speak with the township trustees, and hopefully I'll have more to report on that at the next meeting.”

• The board accepted the financial reports for July and August as presented by Johansen. The HCLRC started July with a balance of $403,779.73 and ended August with a balance of $413,380.22. Johansen noted that they are still awaiting $35,756 in reimbursements from the Ohio Department of Development for previous demolition projects.

• The board also authorized Johansen to pay a lengthy list of unpaid bills. Outstanding invoices included bills for advertising; legal fees; mowing, ivy removal and tree removal at properties owned by the land bank; environmental services, with oil testing and removal of a tank/drum of used oil completed in Lynchburg (which Johansen said will be reimbursed by ODOD); asbestos abatement; office rent; salary and various expenses for Johansen; and stamps.

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