Old B Square

Again denied: Bloomington BPW rejects resident’s appeal of citation, OKs cleanup order

On Tuesday night, Bloomington’s board of public works denied the appeal by Joe Davis for a citation by the city—for what the city staff considers to be violations of the health and sanitation parts of city code (Title 6) at his South Washington Street property.

In a separate action, the three-member board granted the request from the city’s housing and neighborhood development (HAND) department for a continuous abatement of Davis’s property. That means that the city can come onto the property and put it into a condition that the city believes is compliant with local code.

After Tuesday’s meeting, Davis told The B Square that he intends to challenge the board’s decisions in the Monroe County circuit court.

Davis has experience with that kind of legal challenge. He represented himself in connection with a previous abatement order, which the city started to enforce in the second week of August. For that order, Davis did not prevail in his court action, but did run out the clock on the city’s abatement order, which expired on Aug. 11.

This week’s action by the board of public works follows last week’s decision by the city’s board of zoning appeals (BZA), to deny Davis’s appeal of a different citation—for backyard parking and storage (Title 20).

Davis told The B Square he will also challenge the BZA’s decision in circuit court.

On Davis’s property various materials and artifacts are visible, which the city concludes are a violation of local code. B Square photographs of the property are included below.

Tuesday’s decision came after the hearing was postponed from a Oct. 10 meeting. At the October meeting, Davis used more than an hour at the mic to argue about procedural matters, not yielding to the request of board president Kyla Cox Deckard to sit down.

On Tuesday, Davis was less contentious, but expressed his frustration that the board would not delay the hearing for 10 minutes so that his supporters could have time to arrive. By the end of the hearing, Bloomington residents Marc Haggerty and Jami Scholl arrived and spoke from the public mic in support of Davis’s position.

At Tuesday’s meeting, board of public works president Kyla Cox Deckard told Davis that it is important for him to complete and submit to the city an inventory of items on his property that he considers to be building materials.

The inventory was something that was agreed to at a meeting on Nov. 2 in Davis’s backyard between Davis and three city department heads: Beth Cate (corporate counsel); John Zody (HAND department); and Scott Robinson (planning and transportation department).

Cox Deckard told Davis: “Your definition of building materials, and the city’s definition of building materials may not be the same.” She continued, “What might be viewed on the property as being a violation of Title 6, you may see those as building materials.”

The idea appears to be that any items that are building materials would not be removed from Davis’s property as a part of the city’s Title 6 (health and sanitation) abatement procedure.

There’s also an area of Davis’s property that the city’s HAND department will consider off limits, according to assistant city attorney Christopher Wheeler. Responding to a question from board member Jane Kupersmith, Wheeler said, “HAND enforcement—neighborhood enforcement or compliance officers—have been instructed to stay off the porch.”

The building materials relate to the fact that Davis considers his property to be an active construction site. In February, he received a building permit to construct an accessory structure, which he says he will use to store many of the materials that are now placed around the property.

Even if the HAND department’s abatement work is not intended to disturb Davis’s building materials, the planning and transportation department’s view of those materials is that they violate the Title 20 zoning code on outside storage. That was the subject of Davis’s unsuccessful appeal to the BZA last week.

The dispute between Davis and the city over the condition of his property goes back at least as far as 2021.

One of the sore points for Davis is how the city documents the conditions of his property. Davis contends that city staff will “trespass” on his next-door neighbor’s property in order to photograph his yard. The city has written permission from the owner of the property to access it.

After Tuesday’s meeting, Davis raised the question of trespass with deputy chief of police Scott Oldham—he had attended the board of public safety meeting just down the hall. Davis showed Oldham the newest batch of photos that HAND staff had taken, saying that from the angle, it was clear that HAND staff had at least “broken the plane” of his property line.

Oldham told Davis he would need more than that to show that a trespass had taken place—saying that you have to tell someone to leave and they have to refuse to leave, in order to make a case. Oldham also told Davis he had the option of taking the materials to the county prosecutor’s office and asking for prosecution.

Davis is a self-described “unconventional guy” who says he has been working to restore the South Washington Street house since 2009, when he purchased the property for $65,000. Davis has 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.

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. Davis says he has tried gradually, room-by-room, to restore the house to some kind of decent shape.

The table below illustrates the contrasting points of view for the city of Bloomington and Davis about his property. The table is not exhaustive. In this set, there were 15 exhibits presented to the board.

**Table: Contrasting Points of View for Selected City Exhibits**
Exhibit	City’s Description (from written materials)	Davis’s Oral Description (Nov. 21, 2023)
	Clay pipe and buckets, interior mirror fragment, metal grates in various stages of decomposition	“You can see item number one here you can see this is a bucket, I’m working on the landscape, it had gravel in it, OK? This is a container from a plant that I planted in the landscape. You can see my art items, my mirror he calls this a fragment of a mirror, I don’t know where that comes from.”
	Clay pipe, metal grates, metal pieces in various stages of decomposition	“OK, here again, he states that all this is rubbish. These are my installed art. He says that these tiles are rubbish, I stood them up and I put plants in them so that they could be seen more so as a container for my plants. They are not rubbish.”
	Fence posts in various stages of decomposition	“Once again, items in the front of my house. This is my installed art. And these are these are from those very same images.”
	Yard waste	“This is some wood that I piled up and then broke down and buried in my soil. This is building my soil. You can see right back here. The screened soil that I have been moving from the back from my compost pile up to the front.”
	Awning, sink, scrap metal items in various stages of decomposition	“You can see here at the corner, my grandpa’s washing machine I’ve been using this clothes washing machine on my property ever since I purchased it 14 years ago. You can see my laundry detergent right there.”