Around 9 a.m. on Wednesday, employees of an independent contractor hired by the city of Bloomington started removing “garbage” from the South Washington Street property owned by Joe Davis.
They were accompanied by staff from the city of Bloomington’s Housing and Neighborhood Development department, an assistant city attorney, and some police officers who were on civil standby.
The group of contractors and city officials were there to enforce an abatement order that had been approved on March 14 by Bloomington’s three-member board of public works.
Some of the material was removed on Wednesday morning, but by noon the abatement team had left the property with most of their work still unfinished.
Later in the day on Wednesday, Davis filed an appeal of a Tuesday court ruling that had not gone his way.
Earlier this year, Davis gathered signatures in support of an independent mayoral candidacy, but fell 14 short of qualifying for the ballot.
It’s not clear when the abatement efforts will resume.
Remaining in Davis’s backyard are some stacks of lumber, a working washing machine, a van with a trailer, and a truck with boards and other materials stacked on them, pieces from a rooftop antenna, and some pieces of scaffolding, among many other things.
At its mid-March meeting, the board of public works had upheld the notices of violation issued by the city’s HAND department. The board also granted the department’s request for the authority to go onto Davis’s property to address what the city says is a violation of a local code [BMC 6.06.020]. The code makes it unlawful to “throw, place, or scatter any garbage, recyclable materials or yard waste over or upon any premises, street, alley, either public or private,…”
The timing of Wednesday morning’s abatement activity was tied to an order issued by Monroe County circuit court judge Kara Krothe late Tuesday afternoon. In her order, Krothe granted a motion from the city to dismiss a lawsuit Davis had brought, to try to stop the city from coming onto his property.
The hearing on the city’s motion to dismiss was held last week on Thursday, Aug. 3. The hearing came after Davis won a preliminary injunction against the city, which for a while stopped the city from executing its abatement order.
At the hearing, for around 90 minutes Davis and assistant attorney Chris Wheeler went round and round on the legal questions, which boiled down to the technical and procedural issues outlined in Krothe’s order. Among other things, Krothe concluded that Davis had not filed his complaint about the notices of violation from the HAND department in a timely way—the NOVs were dated in September of 2022.
Krothe’s Tuesday order granted the city’s motion for dismissal, and vacated the preliminary injunction.
On Wednesday morning, as the contractors were removing some boards from the back of the trailer hitched to a van that is parked in the backyard, Davis shouted, “This is theft of my building materials!”
Davis takes the position that the materials that are stacked around his property are building materials and tools—needed for the kind of active construction site he is overseeing. Davis takes the position that the material is not “garbage” as the city contends.
In the city code, “garbage” is defined as “putrescible animal and vegetable wastes, resulting from handling, preparation, cooking and consumption of food; refuse; and rubbish.”
On Wednesday morning Davis was scrambling to cover some of the materials with a tarp, and to stand up some panels that he described as 100-year-old barn doors.
The city’s contention is that the boards in the piles are rotted. Some of the boards appeared in places that they might be rotted, but others did not.
The contractors pried at the panels to dismantle them so that they would fit into their trailer. As they pried, the wood made a popping sound. Davis exclaimed, “That is not the crack of rotten wood! That is the crack of sound wood going on right now!”
Davis’s property has been the site of ongoing work since 2009, when he purchased the property for $65,000.
Davis told The B Square that in 2007, two years before he bought it, the house was damaged by fire. The damage from the fire is visible on the eves of the front porch.
The blaze started when people living in the house two doors to the south fired bottle rockets onto the roof, Davis said. That’s the house where Hoagy Carmichael reportedly composed the iconic melody “Stardust.”
After the fire, the house had sat abandoned for two years. And during that time, all the pipes burst because there was no heat, Davis said. “Thieves came in and stole the wiring, and homeless people were living in there,” Davis said.
The ceiling had been pulled down when the fire was put out, he said. When he first moved in, Davis said, he had to set up a tent inside and basically live in the house as if he were camping. Davis said he has tried gradually, room-by-room, to restore the house to some kind of decent shape.
Davis told The B Square that Krothe’s Tuesday afternoon court order had arrived in his email inbox in the early morning hours of Wednesday, but he did not see it until around 9 a.m.
When he saw the order, which granted the city’s motion for dismissal of his case, Davis said he left the house to head to the circuit court to file an appeal. But he encountered the abatement team, which was already assembled, and ready to come onto his property.
Only later in the day did Davis file his hand-scrawled notice of appeal.
The notice of appeal may have been enough to buy Davis some additional time. The abatement team did not return to his property on Thursday. HAND director John Zody responded to an emailed question from The B Square about his department’s planned abatement activity by saying he would not comment on pending litigation.
The swiftness of the city’s action in response to Krothe’s order, which came just several hours after it was issued, could be explained by a potential Aug. 11 end date for the city’s abatement order.
A March 15, 2023 letter sent to Davis by public works director Adam Wason states, “The Board’s Order is continuous and shall remain in effect until August 11, 2023.” That’s exactly 150 days after the March 14 decision by the board to grant the HAND department’s request for an abatement order. It’s not clear where that 150-day time frame comes from.
But the actual abatement order gives a one-year timeframe for the abatement order, which ends on March 14, 2024.
Next up in the court case, in response to Davis’s filing of a notice of appeal, is a hearing set for Aug. 15 at 10 a.m.
Also still possibly in the works is a court filing by Davis in a different matter, involving Davis’s attempted candidacy for mayor of Bloomington as an independent candidate.
In mid-July, the election board denied his challenge over the adequacy of the petition signatures that he had submitted. But Davis told The B Square on Thursday that by next Monday he hopes to file an appeal of that election board decision.
Photos: 530 S. Washington (Aug. 9, 2023)
Reminded of George Carlin routine about “stuff”. “My stuff, your crap.” Aesthetic screening all that was needed, not removal of reusable materials. One Council meeting decried a stack of hats in a photo. Joe could give a little, has taken measures, but has dragged his feet a bit. But this broad authority (contradictory code cited) is against frugal economics and environmental ethics of preventing waste. Living walls, green fencescreens would keep the sight from sore eyes.
Yet this doesn’t seem healthy and could draw vermin. He could build a shed or rent a storage unit for all of this material which negatively effects the neighbors. A little bit more respect for his neighbors would be welcomed.
Let the man fix his goddammed house!!!!!! Go hassle the fucking homeless drug addicts that trash public property in plain view of everyone including the police
But he isn’t.
I note the previous responses of “my stuff” “vermin” and the (unnecessarily) profane one.
First, I want to express my appreciation for the fine coverage and photography. Well done. Next I want to express appreciation for the civil way (on both sides) that this is being handled.
That said, what really strikes me is how this event is a touchstone for how Bloomington has evolved. When I came here in 1975, I was struck by the extreme poverty and shantytown that was then called “pigeon hill.” This property reminds me of that. We are seeing a seemingly bygone hippie cobbling his home together and allegedly annoying his neighborhood. I see evidence of hording too. Years ago that would have been normal, but Bloomington today is elite and gentrified. That is just the way it is.
If rats were in evidence, then I would agree with the neighborhood. Still, I spend a lot of time internationally and have seen many rats. I think they got a bum rap for spreading diseases to humans and I don’t understand why so many people freak out about mice. But I’ll allow for that.
Its sad to say goodbye to who we were, but this trend began many years ago as the Earth Kitchen burned and the Tao folded (c. 1979). But this development greed will produce a market bubble fairly soon that will hurt everyone and help some with affordable housing (as supply exceeds demand and rent falls).
This trend is beyond anyone’s control and the city government is heaving coal in the locomotive boiler and not paying attention to what is coming.
I’m also left to wonder how many armed officers of the state are needed to subdue a seeming well-meaning, well-behaved and peaceful hippie? Shouldn’t they have brought machine guns and wore riot gear?
I recently heard “This is the Way” for what that is worth.
Does this incident fairly reflect who we have become?
The trend is *not* beyond our control. It is our local government that is doing this. We get the government we deserve. I, for one, prefer an urban or a rural look to a suburban one. Sterile conformity is neither healthy nor interesting.
With respect, no one deserves the horror, called city government, that they are experiencing.
I thought the photo of the stern armed officer of the state pointing his finger to direct a citizen on his own property captured the moment.
You really don’t know what the officer said.
Duh.
I stewed on this more, and wonder if perhaps the armed response should have included the armored riot truck. If they had drove that through the house, it would have solved all the neighbor’s alleged problems, except for the deer. By the way I don’t understand why the armored truck isn’t used on the deer. Perhaps that requires a approval of the district IV Sangkat.
(I have never understood how the city thinks, dating back to “Busted in Bloomington.”) https://www.amazon.com/Busted-Bloomington-Tragedy-Summer-68-ebook/dp/B0934ZGVY9
HAND has a program to help people fix their homes. A loan that is not due until the house is sold.
FYI, here’s the photograph of the ‘Stardust’ house, two doors to the south: https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/images/item.htm?id=http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/images/VAC9217/VAC9217-000018&scope=
It is in the Hoagy Carmichael Collection of the Archives of Traditional Music, not the IU Archives as indicated in the linked article.
An active construction site since 2009? Not! Not active, in any event. The house could have been demolished and rebuilt multiple times in fourteen years.
But the real issue is that the assessed value cant be jacked up every damn year….
You couldn’t help yourself with the cat pictures, could you Dave?
I wonder which individual initiated this violation of Mr. Davis’s property rights. Notice that in court, he lost on a technicality, not on the merits of his case. That’s how the law has to work– deadlines are deadlines– but it means that the city has not proved that it was no violating his rights, just that it was doing it legally because he didn’t have a good lawyer (or any lawyer, probably).
When I joined this community in 1975, the entire city government, except for the police department, fit inside the building that is now police headquarters. Now that building is too small for our police department and city government became so large that it filled a warehouse.
Until we stop abusing police power to intimidate messy hippies, the city government growth trend and destruction of our sense of community will continue.