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Property owner responds to Junction City lawsuit

May 03, 2012|By TODD KLEFFMAN | tkleffman@amnews.com

James Albert Coontz

JUNCTION¿CITY¿— James Albert Coontz got mad as a hornet Wednesday afternoon after learning that his home on West Grubbs Lane was featured on the front page of The Advocate-Messenger in a story about Junction City filing lawsuits against property owners to collect maintenance fees on unkempt lots.

“It hit the newspaper before I knew anything about it,” Coontz said later Wednesday during an interview at Hardee’s.

Coontz is named as defendant in a lawsuit filed last week in Boyle Circuit Court that alleges he owes the city $3,000 for 10 separate clean-ups of his property by city employees between May 2010 and August 2011, and also $40.32 in back taxes. The lawsuit requests the sale of the property to pay the overdue fees.

The lawsuit cites the property deed on file at the courthouse showing Coontz bought the property in January 2011. Coontz maintains, however, that he just purchased the foreclosed property on Jan. 10 and did a title search with his attorney that showed no liens or other encumbrances against the small lot and two-story home at the intersection of West Grubbs Lane and U.S. 127 that he is currently remodeling and plans to move into.

Any liens on the property were attached after he purchased it, Coontz said.

“I have a clear deed,” he said.

Coontz, a disabled veteran who lives just outside Junction City in Lincoln County, said he has no intention of paying the city for clean-ups at the property that took place before he purchased it.

“When I buy it, I don’t assume some other people’s problems,” said Coontz, who has not yet filed a legal response to the allegations made in the lawsuit. “I think it’s bullcrap. I’m not going to be jacked with. I’ve got as much money as they do, and I don’t care. I’m not going to pay them, and I don’t think there’s a judge in the state that would make me do that.”

Junction City Attorney Brad Guthrie could not be reached for comment today. In an interview Tuesday, Guthrie said the lawsuit against Coontz is the first of more than 50 that are expected to be filed against property owners who have violated the city’s ordinance prohibiting untidy lots and been cleaned up by city employees. Coontz was randomly selected as the first of the bunch because his case came to Guthrie’s office ahead of the others, the attorney explained.

“They aren’t trying to single him out,” Guthrie said Tuesday. “This is nothing against Mr. Coontz himself, except he bought property with a bunch of liens against it.”

Mayor Jim Douglas and Police Chief Merl Baldwin both said Coontz has been easy to work with and has done a good job of cleaning up the property while he is fixing it up. The city is going after all of those in violation of the ordinance in court because many have just ignored the city’s repeated efforts to get owners to keep their properties tidy, Douglas said.

Coontz said it’s wrong for the city to pick on his property for violations that occurred before he owned it and after he’s made every effort to clean up the property and improve it in the four months he has owned it.¿The lawsuit unfairly makes him look like a slob and a scofflaw, he said.

“I feel like this is casting me in a bad light, and people will say that I’m making them pay to clean up my property, and that’s not right,” he said.

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