Deal for blighted Key West property denied by commissioners

Deal for blighted Key West property denied by commissioners

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

It’s standard operating procedure in Key West: A property owner neglects his or her property, a judge issues a fine and the city and owner settle for an amount much lower than the original penalty.

But not this time.

A vacant house at 1523 Seminary St. started drawing complaints from neighbors last June. When a city code compliance officer responded, the finding was that the property was “vacant, overgrown and had debris littered throughout.”

“Also, the building was left unsecured and open to the public,” a memo from Code Compliance Director Jim Young stated.

When the owner, ARCPE 1, a real estate investment company based in Miami, did not respond, the matter went before a special magistrate, who levied a $250 a day fine. Because of inaction by the owner, the fine ballooned to $12,750 and a lien was placed against the property in November, preventing it from being sold until the fine was paid. After 51 days, the owner fixed the violations and a request to settle the $12,750 fine for $2,000 was send to the city code compliance department, which recommended to city commissioners that the offer be accepted.

The deal would likely have sailed through without comment except for Tom Milone, a local resident and frequent city commission meeting attendee who pays attention to what’s on the agenda. Milone doesn’t know the property owner or live in the neighborhood but reducing fines on code violations just rubs him the wrong way. He signed up to speak on the matter, which automatically took the item off the consent agenda where it would have been unanimously approved without discussion.

“The owner is only offering 16 percent of the total fine. The owner provides no reason why it took the owner 50 days to comply with the judge’s decision,” Milone told commissioners. “Because of all this, I ask that you deny this with instructions to the owner to come back with a better offer.”

That got commissioners’ attention. Querying both the city attorney and city manager, it came out that the ARCPE 1 had sold the house to a new owner. The offer to settle for $2,000 came from the unnamed new owner because the $12,750 lien was preventing the sale from going through. As for why the lien was reduced so significantly, City Manager Jim Scholl said that was normal in the case of code violation compliance.

“From what we have done historically, this is consistent with that action. With code compliance, the goal is to encourage and then enforce compliance,” he said.

That didn’t sit well with several commissioners, although they had been prepared to approve the settlement without discussion. Commissioner Margaret Romero, commenting before a motion to deny the settlement was made, said she would vote for the $2,000 deal but wanted code compliance officers to crack down going forward.

“If the fines are there, I don’t think that accepting 10 or 15 cents on the dollar is acceptable. We have things that need to be recovered on the city’s behalf,” she said.

But then Commissioner Billy Wardlow made the motion to deny the settlement, with Commissioner Richard Payne seconding. Wardlow said ARCPE I should have responded sooner than the 51 days it took to correct the violations. And Payne said that $2,000 was too low.

“It’s insufficient,” he said. “If they come back with a better offer, maybe I could see my way to approve it.”

Mayor Craig Cates said a blighted property forces neighbors to deal with the issue, reduces area property values and is simply disrespectful.

“To cut it [settlement] down to 12 percent or 15 percent just because they asked, I can’t agree with that,” he said.

As for Tom Milone, he was pretty pleased after the unanimous vote to deny accepting the settlement.

“I just don’t like lien mitigations,” he said after the meeting.

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