Committee holds vacant property discussion

The chair of a Havre City Council committee plans to request the creation of an ad hoc committee to look at what should be done about vacant properties after a committee meeting Tuesday to discuss Havreite Samantha Clawson's suggestion the city create a vacant property registration ordinance.

Clawson said during Tuesday's Ordinance Committee meeting that she thinks the city needs to do something to make sure empty properties are cared for.

"A lot of vacant properties, the people who are buying them have absolutely no intent to fix the property up and bring it back into usefulness," said Clawson, the wife of council member Caleb Hutchins. "Their plan is to leave it and never invest any money in it, and I don't know why, but it happens."

Havre City Council President and Ordinance Committee Chair Andrew Brekke said he will propose to City Council that Mayor Tim Solomon create an ad hoc study committee to look at how deal with the issue of vacant properties.

Brekke said he will leave the decision to Solomon about whether the committee will look at establishing a vacant property registration ordinance, a blight ordinance or a combination of the two. Solomon will also decide whether the committee will be made up of council members, appointed community volunteers or a combination of the two, he added.

All  of the council's seven sitting members were present at the committee meeting.

Clawson, who owns a Havre home with her husband, presented the idea of a vacant property registration ordinance, or VPRO, to council last month. She said then that a VPRO is meant to discourage people from buying properties when they have no intention of rehabilitating them or accept reasonable offers. Clawson gave the example of Sunrise Financial, a company out of Great Falls that has bought several properties that it has not maintained or sold.

A VPRO would require owners of vacant properties to register with the city and possibly pay a fee. The registry would consist of the contact information of owners of vacant and foreclosed properties that would be accessible to the public and likely posted on a website. It could also require buyers of vacant properties have a timeline and plan to rehabilitate the property.

The presence of such abandoned properties increases the likelihood of crime, decreases the values of surrounding properties and presents safety hazards, Clawson said during Tuesday's meeting.  

Though some council members and Solomon have said the presence of companies like Sunrise has allowed the city to collect a small amount of taxes on properties they otherwise would not be able to, Clawson said money gained from taxes is offset by the reduction in tax revenue as a result of decreased property value and in some cases the money it takes for the city to care for such property.

"They have to maintain certain standards of safety in a city," she said. "If the property owners aren't maintaining those standards, often times those responsibilities go to the government."

She added that VPROs can be shaped to meet the needs of a community. A jurisdiction can decide if certain properties can be exempt from registering or require them to register but not have to pay the fee she said. A sliding fee scale can be put in place where someone who has left a property vacant for a longer period of time would have to pay more than someone who has had the property for less time.

A VPRO can also be used to cut down on blighted properties, Clawson said, depending on how the VPRO is structured.

A blight ordinance is another way that blight could be reduced, Brekke said, adding that a blight ordinance would include a specific definition of what constitutes blight within a jurisdiction and what to do about blight.

Clawson used a VPRO enacted last year in the combined city and county government of Butte-Silverbow as an example of passing a VPRO.

Solomon said he talked to officials in Butte-Silverbow about their VPRO. He said Butte-Silverbow officials said it was enacted to stop out-of-state investors from buying up commercial buildings that had fallen into disrepair, about 500 buildings.

Solomon estimated there were about 50 such properties in Havre. He said the buildings are secure and boarded up, have their lawns mowed as required by law and the city knows who to contact if issues arise.

He said in Butte-Silverbow the VPRO was meant to collect information about who owns vacant properties, something the city already does.

Clawson said that is just one purpose of a VPRO.

Solomon said that although he hopes the discussions move the issue of doing something about vacant properties forward, he does not see how the VPRO would give the city any additional tools in cracking down on such properties.

Havre Public works director Dave Peterson said many properties in the city that are inhabited are in far worse shape than those that are vacated. He said a vacant property owner could use that as an argument in court.

"How can I assess a fine to somebody and then you have a house next door that is occupied and people live in it and the conditions aren't any better than that house there?" he asked. "I think that is an issue a person would get into legally with someone who has a vacant house, and then you are talking who pays for all the attorney's fees and everything going through the process. That is where the dollars start adding up."

Clawson said the issue of properties like those Sunrise owns and that of rundown rental properties are two different issues.

"Just because you don't feel there is nothing we can do about rental properties doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about vacant properties," Clawson said.

Former Havre City Council member Emily Mayer was in the audience and said she was glad the city was taking up the issue because she had been on the council for 12 years and when the issue of doing something about vacant properties came up it never went anywhere.