November 14, 2024
The contents of a resident's backyard are carted away by Bloomington, after a years-long court battle is won

The contents of a resident's backyard are carted away by Bloomington, after a years-long court battle is won

Bloomington began removing debris from Joe Davis’ South Washington Street property at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday.

City officials consider the wood, sheet metal, furniture, bicycle frames, and other things carried away by a private contractor on Tuesday morning code offenses. [BMC 6.06.020]

Davis claims the material is building material, art installation material, or homestead tools, while the city calls it “garbage”.

HAND (housing and neighborhood development) officials, the city attorney’s office, Bloomington police, and around a dozen Fire Dawgs workers were involved in the Tuesday morning enforcement action.

The city relied on Monroe County circuit court judge Emily Salzmann’s finding a week earlier that the board of public works was justified in abating Davis’s property.

To abate a property means to enter it to bring it into city conformity.

This city lawsuit against Davis began in fall 2023. After a year of court battles, the city won its abatement order in August 2023, but Davis had already run out the clock.

The city’s action Tuesday followed Davis’ notice of appeal last week, the same day Salzmann made her verdict. Davis requested the judge postpone the order pending appeal in his notice.

Bloomington began its abatement on Tuesday without a court ruling on Davis’s original appeal notice.

After the city’s abatement work began on Tuesday, Davis went to the courthouse to get an emergency injunction to avoid enforcement. Davis lost when Salzmann issued her emergency injunction order at quarter to noon.

Davis was standing on the bed of his 1965 flatbed Ford in his garden when the court clerk called him about Salzmann’s verdict. By then, the bed was mostly empty. His wood stack was gone.

Four Fire Dawgs box trucks, each 18 cubic yards, carried Davis’s backyard stuff. Davis’ Washington Street-parked pickup truck bed was also taken.

When The B Square went to Davis’s property midafternoon, he indicated the city’s planning and transportation department may try to tow the flatbed Ford and two other cars from the backyard. The city claims they are parked on an unimproved surface, violating the zoning rules.

During Tuesday morning’s abatement activity, Davis appeared to be about to be arrested by BPD. He was repeatedly instructed he could film the stuff being taken but not touch the Fire Dawg workers.

Davis followed officers’ rules.

Davis’ constant commentary on the proceedings provides a brief inventory of the objects removed:

You are stealing my fence…
You’re stealing my metal fence post…
You are stealing my building materials from under my overhang…
You’re stealing my irreplaceable windows from Collins Living Learning Center…
You’re stealing my grill and my broom…
You’re stealing my metal…
You’re stealing my stuff off of the car …
You’re stealing the frame for my two story structure …
You are stealing my corner post for my two-story structure…
You are stealing my metal roofing right there…

Davis also called HAND and city legal personnel “Big Dog” and “master abaters.”

Davis told The B Square that the Collins Living and Learning Center windows at Indiana University were not from the latest restorations. He thought he saved them from a dormitory window replacement 10–15 years ago. Collins windows were dumped at Rumpke or Republic waste facilities.

Bloomington responded to the court’s previous direction to indicate whether it would respond to Davis’s stay application on Monday evening, just past 7 p.m. Without a court response, the city began abatement on Tuesday morning.

Legal proceedings Monday night, Tuesday morning

Last Monday, when Davis filed his notice of appeal, the court ordered the City of Bloomington Board of Public Works to notify the court if they would respond to Plaintiff’s motion to stay pending appeal.

Bloomington informed the court late Monday that Davis had not met the procedural criteria for a proper notice of appeal and that no appeal was underway.

Bloomington further contended that Davis had not done anything else to warrant a stay, such as invoking Trial Rule 62 to seek a post-judgment stay to correct an error under Trial Rule 59 or relief from judgment under Trial Rule 60.

In its late Monday answer, the city said abatement might begin Tuesday: Since no stay has been granted, the City plans to abate Petitioner’s property on Tuesday, October 22, 2024.

The city began abatement on Tuesday morning as planned in its filing.

In her order issued just before noon on Tuesday after Davis filed his emergency injunction request, Salzmann noted that Davis had “failed on appeal previously in an almost identical situation due to his failure to comply with the procedural requirements of the appellate rules and has failed to articulate or identify any error upon which he would succeed on appeal.”

According to Salzmann, the previous “almost identical situation” ended locally in August 2023. Monroe County circuit judge Kara Krothe ruled against Davis like Salzmann, but with one important difference.

Salzmann’s verdict extended the city 254 additional days on its abatement order, which expired on Aug. 17, 2023, unlike Krothe’s.

Krothe wrote last year that the city’s abatement order ended on August 11, 2023, and she refused to add days. Defendants [city of Bloomington] wanted the Court to extend the Abatement Order but presented no authority.

Salzmann based her decision to add days on the language of the temporary emergency injunction order. Before recusing herself, circuit court judge Catherine Stafford wrote that.

“This court grants this temporary emergency injunction to preserve the status quo until the new court can have [sic] a hearing on the matters.”

Salzmann viewed maintaining the status quo as preserving the abatement order’s days when the emergency temporary injunction was granted.

So Tuesday’s events prevented some legal questions from being answered before most of Davis’s backyard was cleared and disposed of.

Source

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *