Court to order Lincoln man to sell land

LINCOLN – A District Court judge will order Edwin Goodwin to give one of his Main Street properties to the town and share proceeds from another parcel’s sale to pay $38,652 in fines accrued by the town resident’s failure to clean up an illegal junkyard.

Judge Kevin Stitham said he will order Goodwin to use his properties at 475 and 477 Main Street to settle his debt after hearing about two hours of testimony Friday in 13th District Court. Stitham rejected Goodwin’s arguments that the fines were unfair and violated Goodwin’s rights to due process. He rebuked Goodwin’s assertions that Town Manager Glenn Aho and other town officials violated town procedures and reneged on an agreement to settle the fines for about $6,000.

“I think that if the town manager’s word was good, we would have an agreement right now,” said Goodwin, who represented himself during the hearing.

“Why was I singled out? I believe this is illegal extortion,” Goodwin said.

Under Stitham’s questioning, Goodwin admitted he had won his argument that the town should not make him pay about $6,000 in legal fees for previous court actions, which Stitham reaffirmed, but never settled anything else despite having several months to do so.

“Your problem is that the town had previously gotten a judgment ruling in favor of the $38,000 in fines,” Stitham told Goodwin. “You never had an agreement settling the fines.”

Stitham asked the attorney representing the town, Peter D. Klein of Bangor, to have a draft order ready for his review by June 1. The order will require Goodwin to turn over 477 Main St. and will order that 475 Main St. be sold, Stitham said.

The properties are worth about $22,500 each. With the two properties, the town is to gain $38,652 in cash or value. Other sale proceeds will go to Goodwin, Stitham said.

Goodwin declined to comment after the hearing.

For more than a year, town officials have been focusing on alleged junkyard properties, including Goodwin’s. Assisted by police, public works department workers last week cleaned up a blighted property owned by resident Thomas Rosebush per a court agreement. The cleanup went without incident, Ruth Birtz, town economic development assistant and a zoning enforcement officer, said.

Goodwin cleaned up his property on Route 2 in North Lincoln last year after more than two years of denials that he had a junkyard there, town officials have said. Town officials had tried, off and on, to get him to clean up his property since 1993, they have said.

The town asked the court to review Goodwin’s assets Friday because he failed to pay the fines. On Friday, Klein argued that Goodwin owned four properties and thus was capable of paying the fine.

Aho said the Town Council must decide whether to accept Goodwin’s properties to settle the fines. He plans to present Stitham’s order to the council on June 12, if it has been issued by then.

Meanwhile, Birtz and Jerry Davis, a town zoning enforcement officer, have identified four more properties that they believe are illegal junkyards. They are working with the property owners to get them to clean them up, they said.

One owner already has approached them with a cleanup plan, they said.