Junkyard settlement offers rejected

LINCOLN – Town officials will pursue a local man for $38,652 in fines he accrued by failing for several years to clean up an illegal junkyard, they said Tuesday.

The Town Council opted on Monday to reject resident Edwin Goodwin’s offer to pay $3,000 in fines for failing to clean up his North Lincoln property until last year. They also refused Goodwin’s previous offer of a handshake deal to end the matter without fines, Ruth Birtz, a zoning enforcement supervisor, said.

“We are going to follow through with the court-ordered sale of his properties,” Birtz said Tuesday.

Goodwin could not be reached Tuesday for comment and has declined previous requests for comment.

Council Chairman Steve Clay said he found little traction in Goodwin’s offers.

“Our legal costs were $12,000, just a fraction of the total fine,” Clay said Tuesday.

“He is just trying to come up with what he thinks is a fair solution. In my opinion, we have the guidelines about junkyards, and we can’t be excusing one person and then coming down on another,” Clay added.

Judge Kevin Stitham ordered Goodwin to use his properties at 475 and 477 Main Street to settle his debt after a hearing in late May at 13th District Court. Stitham rejected Goodwin’s arguments that the fines were unfair and violated Goodwin’s rights to due process.

With the two properties, the town is to gain $38,652 in cash or value. Other sale proceeds will go to Goodwin, Stitham’s order said.

For more than a year, town officials have been focusing on alleged junkyard properties, including Goodwin’s. Town officials had tried to get him to clean up his property since 1993, they have said.

On June 20, Goodwin filed an appeal of Stitham’s decision, 13th District Court officials said Tuesday, but that might not go forward, Town Manager Glenn Aho said.

Aho said the court will reject the appeal because Goodwin failed to pay an $800 for a transcript from previous court hearings that would be used in the appeal by Monday, the transcript fee deadline.

No date of sale of Goodwin’s properties has been set.

Thanks partially to the town’s success with Goodwin’s case, town efforts to clean up other supposedly blighted properties have been successful. Two cleanups, on Easy Street and Station Road, are in progress; and single parcels on Easy and on Transalpine Road have been cleaned, Birtz said.

Four or five other property owners are being pursued.

“We have every intention of working with the property owners in an amicable manner, but if they knowingly violate land-use ordinances, they leave the town little choice but to pursue legal means,” Birtz said.