ROCKLAND – Rockland City Councilors questioned a mortgage business representative, Monday, May 7, about his company’s response as to who owns specific vacant property listed as derelict. 

The firm, PHH Mortgage Corp, claims not to own the structure at 13 State Street in Rockland, despite having payed the property taxes for many years. That owner is Theodore Eaton, who had been evicted from the property by the bank years ago, according to PHH representative Len Morley.

Morley attended the May 7 Rockland agenda-setting meeting to talk with the City Council about the property at 13 State Street. The agenda had included the item: 

“That the City Manager is authorized to expend up to (undetermined) amount of money from the City Land Sale Reserve Account to have the structure at 13 State Street removed, and to assess a special tax on the property to recover any funds thus expended.”

In December 2017, city councilors gave the owner 60 days to either begin repairs on the property, with a completion within six months, or, demolish immediately, according to Councilor Amelia Magjik. However, the building was already declared structurally unsafe, unhealthy, and a fire hazard.

In a 2016  letter addressed to Eaton at a Tennessee location, the Rockland Code Enforcement Office described the roof as bowing.

Having attained access to the interior in July 2017, conditions expanded to include badly decaying support timbers at the south side of the house, significant amounts of black and white mold and mildew within the living space due to water infiltration from the leaking roof, portions of the cellar open to the outside environment and numerous violations to electrical and plumbing codes.

The state allows municipalities to declare a structure as abandoned or dangerous and request repairs or demolition, according to Geiger.

“We have now help from the state for exactly this reason, that banks have been staying in pre-foreclosure so that no one can hold them accountable for this,” Geiger said.

However, as Councilor Lisa Westkaemper clarified, their order from 2017 used the phrase ‘may demolish’ not ‘shall demolish.’

Now that the 60-day stipulation is long passed, the council is returning to the order with renewed intention to level what they consider a dangerous, derelict building.

Morley, speaking for the bank he represents, attended the agenda-setting meeting in order to express the bank’s acceptance of that demolition.

“This is a game that banks play,” Mayor Valli Geiger said during the same meeting. “To stay at the pre-foreclosure status for years. In the meantime, we have buildings like this one all over the city that continue to deteriorate. Because the bank isn’t taking responsibility. They’ve already made the people who did own it move out, but they haven’t crossed that last T or dotted that last I, which puts the City in a terrible position.

“What you are telling us is that the bank is not going to take responsibility for the fact that, for all intents and purposes, it does own this building, and it’s not going to move ahead, as they agreed, on demolition.”

Morley disagreed. The bank has not completed the legal process required by state law in order to acquire the property’s title, he said.

“There is no shortcutting that process,” he said. “It is a very specific judicial process. There are a number of statutes and case decisions over the past number of years that have made that process much more complicated than it used to be. It needs to be done correctly, otherwise it’s not going to be done at all.”

According to Morley, official foreclosure of the Eaton property could take 18 months.

When Councilor Adam Ackor continued to press Morley for his specific reason for attending the City Council agenda-setting meeting, Morley said he was there to convey that the bank is not opposing Order 29 on the Agenda. Order 29 authorizes the Expenditure of Reserve Funds for 13 State Street.

Ackor said: “You’re not opposing it, but it’s irrelevant because you don’t own it.”

Once the structure is demolished, Morley said the bank would continue its foreclosure of the land and would eventually like to sell it to the highest bidder.

In time for the Monday, May 14, council meeting, Council members have requested that the exact number of years that the building has been vacant, and the number of years that the bank has been paying the taxes be determined.

Reach Sarah Thompson at news@penbaypilot.com