Council votes to condemn dilapidated property
Jun. 8—OTTUMWA — In the end, the decision to condemn a property on Ottumwa's west end was fairly easy, and it rested on one question.
If repairs haven't been made in four years, how can they be done in six months?
That was the question the city council had for property owner Kevin Skinner before deciding on a 4-1 vote Tuesday to condemn his Holt Street residence during the board of health meeting preceding the council meeting. Skinner owns the home that had been placarded for four years, even though he claimed he'd been making fixes.
"I go to work at 1:30 p.m, so they don't give me a lot of time in the morning to get something done," said Skinner, who said his job keeps him away most of the week. "I own it and I'm going to stay in it. But I wasn't told from the get-go that I had to have a licensed electrician or plumber to do the work. No one ever told me."
Technically, Skinner was correct that he could do the work himself — if he was living in the home, which he is not currently doing. City director of community development Zach Simonson pushed back and said, "the law doesn't require a master electrician to do that work, but when we're talking about a dwelling that's been placarded going on four years, it's not your dwelling at that point."
Simonson laid out the unusual timeline from when the property was first placarded in December 2018 to the present, and said the city lost the original file sometime around April of 2019, and it had to be "reconstructed and restarted." He said there were additional complaints in October of last year.
A placard was placed for deficiencies in December 2019 and the city ordered a repair plan, but the placard was removed and a search warrant was granted after a dog was barking inside the home. Nine deficiencies were listed initially, and there also was evidence earlier this year that someone had been living in the placarded building, which is a violation.
After multiple attempts by the city to obtain a repair plan, Simonson said it finally received one in May, and that Skinner had requested an inspection for Tuesday before the meeting.
"It was the first time that the owner has been proactive about working with us in any capacity," Simonson said. "Some material progress was documented, but there are still no connections to utilities, and there's not really strong evidence from the past to show they could sustain doing that."
Skinner said he'd planned to borrow from his 401K to pay for accumulating utility bills.
"I guess my concern is that it's four years later, and we're still on the first one (provide required utilities) that still has not been accomplished," council member Cara Galloway said. "And that's a concern to me."
Councilmember Marc Roe also had concerns, particularly with Skinner's financial situation.
"This list we have before us is long, and if you have to cash out a 401K just to pay the electric bill, that makes me pause and have a lot of concern that you'll be able to have the money to afford the laundry list of improvements that need to be made in a very short amount of time," he said. "Especially when we're considering electricians and plumbers."
Councilmember Doug McAntire sympathized with Skinner's employment situation, but said both the city and Skinner were at fault.
"This puts us in a tough situation, but it seems like you never buckled down to start doing what you should have done, starting back in 2018," he said. "The city should have got back with you, but it also didn't become a priority until more heat came to you guys and the city was cracking down on this."
— Chad Drury can be reached at cdrury@ottumwacourier.com, and on Twitter @ChadDrury
