Commissioner’s Property In Violation Of County Powers Act

A Putnam County Commissioner has violated the County Powers Act, but he plans to clean up the property in question and avoid a battle with the county.

Putnam County officials sent a violation letter to District 3 County Commissioner Jerry Ford on July 9th. The county said his two trailers on 1700 Benton Young Road violated the county powers act because of an overgrown yard and trash being scattered about.

“I have no problem cleaning it up because I have to rent it and I’m losing money everyday it’s not cleaned up and fixed up,” Ford said. “The only thing I could see was one old tire laying out in the yard, the grass had got high, and there’s a thing or two laying around.”

The county commission adopted the County Powers Act in 2015 as a way to eliminate safety and health hazards on properties across the county. In order for a complaint to even be addressed, a person living near the property of concern must file a complaint and then a codes officer will survey the property.

Jerry Ford was one of four commissioners who voted against the ordinance in 2015 and he says he would still vote against it today because he doesn’t agree with people trying to control what he does with his property.

“I can drive up and down that road and show you places that’s worse than mine,” Ford said. “I think there’s people down there that want to run me off my property. They have made offers trying to buy my property, but they want to pay me three or four times less than what I payed for it.”

Ford said he has no ill will towards the county and plans to clean the property up by the August 15th deadline. If he doesn’t, the matter could be turned over to the county attorney.

Putnam County Executive Randy Porter said if the violation is turned over the county attorney, another attempt will be made to get the landowner to clean up the property. A $50 a day fine will be placed on the property as a lien if the owner fails to comply and if the amount builds up far enough the property could be sold to cover the cost of cleaning up the property.

“We try to work with people and give extensions because our only goal is for the property to be cleaned up,” Porter said. “Since we started the county powers act in 2016 we’ve never had to go as far as selling a property.”

Ford will have a chance to appeal the violation to a seven member hearing board.

Porter said the county powers act is one of the better programs adopted by the county in the last couple of years.

“We’ve had about 235 properties that have been turned in with complaints and over 70-percent of those have already been cleaned up,” Porter said. “It’s been well received. We do have a few that are in the hands of the county attorney, but everyone has been pretty good about getting the properties cleaned up.”

Porter said this was the second time that the property has violated the County Powers Act.