Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By P.J. GLISSON
Wakefield — The subject of blight was a priority for members of the Wakefield Planning Commission at its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday evening.
That’s in part because City Manager Robert Brown, Jr. and other city workers, as well as a contractor with a semitrailer, had worked all day to clear a Plymouth site that had haunted the city extendedly.
“This has been going on about 14 years,” said Brown, who noted that he had just received, in the past month, a court order to address the quarter-acre property.
Although Brown was pleased to have the property cleared, the news was secondary to the larger, remaining concern of how to handle what Councilman James Anderson called a “crazy” situation on Chaney Lake Road.
Brown shared several digital photos of the property, which included a variety of issues such as cars, tires and widespread clutter. He said that nobody was now living on the land.
“This has been going on for four, five, six years,” Commissioner Marco Movrich said of the property owner. “I feel he’s had all the time in the world to do this.”
Mayor Dale White saidthat a court judgment will weigh heavily on when the official city communication began. Brown said the first date of contact during his tenure as city manager was May 9, 2020.
“You never want the court to accuse you of picking on an individual,” said White. “I’m not saying let’s give him another six or seven years, I’m saying let’s give him a reasonable time frame. I would love to see an effort before the end of the year.”
White implied that part of the blame is with the city for having had a history of letting people get away with property blight. “We’ve never enforced anything,” he said.
Chairperson Tara Hamilton pointed out that the property owner can call a junkyard to pick up the vehicles.
Moreover, Brown explained that he had talked with a relative of the property owner, who pledged to address the problem. “I’m a nice guy,” he said, adding that he’d be inclined to push the deadline for full accountability to next year.
At Brown’s recommendation, commissioners tabled the matter to allow them to check out the land in question individually and then meet on Thursday to address the issue again.
Brown said he also plans to work with City Attorney Ray O’Dea to develop guidelines for clean-up in accordance with city blight rules.
Both he and commissioners bemoaned the overall cost of addressing blight, which can run into tens of thousands, depending on the size of the property and the gravity of the problem.
“The sad part is we, the taxpayers, are paying for this,” said Movrich.
After the meeting, brown clarified that — if the Chaney Lake property problems are not resolved by the owner’s family — the plot will be too large for the city to handle on its own.
He explained that the Plymouth property cleared by city workers on Tuesday was only one-quarter of an acre and estimated that the Chaney Lake property is five or six times larger with more complex issues.
“I hate blight,” said Brown of the overall considerations. “It is the worst part of a city manager’s job.”
He added, in relation to the deliberative process involved in making progress, “Government is supposed to be slow so that we don’t make mistakes.”
In other news, commissioners also voted to refer property ID 53-01-101-600 to the City Council after a request by Thomas Adelman of Katy, Texas, to purchase the nearly half-acre of land.
Adelman is building a house on his own plot across the road and wants the new site on which to build a garage.
Brown said the council now will take steps to declare the property as surplus and to facilitate it being put up for bid, per a minimum value declared by City Assessor Melissa Prisbe.
Commissioners will have a special meeting to take action on the aforementioned Chaney Lake Road property on Thursday. The commission’s next regular meeting will be on Sept. 14.
Both meetings will be at 5:30 p.m. in the municipal building, and the public is welcome. Persons wishing to attend the hybrid meetings virtually should first call the municipal building at 906-229-5131 for access information.
