City files condemnation notices
The 20 notices of condemnation the city has filed since the start of the year are almost equal to the 2016 total, according to property records.
The Hot Springs Board of Directors adopted resolutions March 21 condemning six properties. The subsequent condemnation notices were filed the next day with the Garland County circuit clerk’s office. The city filed 14 condemnation notices last month. Twenty-two were filed last year, 19 in 2015, 31 in 2014, 19 in 2014 and 20 in 2012.
Owners of condemned structures have 30 days to appeal the board’s action, but the owners of five of the six properties condemned last week signed waivers that allow the city to demolish the structures.
The list included 124 Oklahoma St. Chief Building Inspector Mike Scott told directors the church that owns the property has been unable to repair the vacant residence.
The city demolished a mobile home at 202 Clara St. prior to condemning it. It was damaged in December during a fire and presented an imminent danger. Scott said the owners plan to put another mobile home on the property.
More than 50 percent of a structure the board condemned at 357 Molly Springs Road was damaged by a fire two years ago. Scott said the property is in a flood plain, and that the structure will have to be torn down before something new could be built.
The city demolished a structure at 1213 Spring St. prior to condemning it. It, too, was damaged in a fire and presented an imminent danger, Scott told the board.
Scott said the owner of a dilapidated structure the board condemned at 705 Illinois St. wants to give the property to the Hot Springs School District. He explained that the high school’s Environmental and Spatial Technologies program plans on building a transitional home on the property for homeless people and transfer ownership of it to the city’s housing authority.
The city tore down a fire-damaged residence at 502 Beard St. without securing a waiver. Its condition presented an imminent danger that needed to be addressed immediately, Scott told the board.
The property was among those listed for condemnation earlier this year, but it was pulled from the board’s Jan. 17 agenda because the city was unable to locate the owner. He has since been located and notified
of the condemnation, Scott told the board.
The board considered placing future condemnations for which the city has secured demolition waivers on the board’s consent agenda, but City Attorney Brian Albright told the directors the resolutions need to remain as new agenda items that the board can debate in an open forum.
Putting them on the consent agenda would make it more difficult to notify heirs or relatives who may have a claim on the condemned properties, he said.
District 4 Director Larry Williams told the board keeping condemnation resolutions as new agenda items is edifying for the public, helping it understand the state of disrepair the buildings lapse into before the city intervenes.
“I think it’s beneficial for the public to see the deplorable conditions the city is forced to deal with,” Williams said. “If we put it on the consent agenda, they don’t see how bad some of these things are.”
The city has stressed condemnations are a last resort for irredeemable properties whose owners are unable or unwilling to bring them up to building codes.
“We’ve tried every opportunity to get them to fix them,” Scott told the board earlier this month. “Most of these houses are unfixable and unrepairable.”
Enhancing the planning and development department’s neighborhood services division is one of the eight goals the board identified for its 2017-18 term. The city’s 2017 budget includes funds to add an inspector and a neighborhood services manager to help the city enforce building codes more aggressively.
The city budgeted $40,000 last year and this year for the demolition and removal of condemned structures. Liens are placed on the properties to secure the city’s demolition expenses.