Henderson County Attorney Steve Gold mentioned in Tuesday’s Henderson Fiscal Court meeting a just-passed state law that will allow counties to pursue legal action regarding abandoned properties more efficiently.
Gold said First Assistant County Attorney Kyle Evans identified the need for a more efficient way to do that after an email from the Kentucky Association of Counties a few years ago looking for legislative ideas. Gold and Evans worked with Murray state Rep. Mary Beth Imes, who sponsored House Bill 600. The bill was signed by Gov. Andy Beshear on April 7.
It will allow county governments to notify unknown occupants, unknown heirs and spouses of unknown heirs of a property in question by way of advertising through public notice, different from current law which requires counties to attempt to make direct contact with the unknown people, Gold said.
For a government to remediate an abandoned property, it must notify all those connected to the property to give them a chance to deal with back taxes and/or liens. If all those connected to a property have been contacted and there is no appetite among the heirs to take over the property or pay its back taxes and liens, then a local government can go through a foreclosure process and then put it up for auction with the Henderson County master commissioner.
This is a positive for local governments because it will allow for a new owner to care for the property, and it will allow the government to begin to collect taxes again on the property.
The problem with current law (which will change July 1), according to Gold, is that counties most often spend time and money trying to contact unknown people connected to an abandoned property. He said county governments use an outside warning order attorney to do this work, and this attorney charges a fee, Gold said. (Cities can attempt to make contact with unknown heirs through advertising, Gold said.)
When unknown people connected to a property are spread out all over the country, those fees can add up, and often, it doesn’t make financial sense for a county to attempt to remediate the property, Gold said. It could take scores of years to recoup the money spent to remediate the property, which is often why county governments haven’t pursued them in the past, he said.
He said that’s why complaints from residents wanting the county government to do something about abandoned properties near their homes sometimes have not led to lasting results—it wasn’t cost effective from county government’s pocketbook standpoint.
Advertising will save money, and the savings could make it more attractive to the Henderson Fiscal Court to attempt to go after some abandoned properties, Gold said.
Now, with the new law starting on July 1, “it makes a whole lot more sense from a business standpoint,” Gold said.
In other news:
- A proclamation was read recognizing April as child abuse awareness month. Samantha Sigler, the executive director of the Children’s Advocacy Center was at the meeting. She said the designation is important because residents must recognize that children suffer from abuse and neglect in the community. She said that of the seven regional counties she works with, Henderson is in the top three of the number of cases of child abuse. She also said that Kentucky is double the national rate of child maltreatment. She said that because Kentucky is a mandatory reporting state, every person who suspects child abuse is required to report it. Gold said there are some states that don’t have mandatory reporting laws, which leads them to be lower on the rankings. But if it wasn’t being reported in Kentucky, “that’s an even bigger problem,” he said.
- The fiscal court approved a proposal to divide among the county volunteer fire departments $38,000-plus left over from a $100,000 federal fund, the Local Assistant and Consistency Fund, which has one of its designated uses as public safety. At a previous fiscal court meeting, the court approved a $61,049 appropriation to pay yearly installment of a four-year contract for body cameras for the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office from the fund, which was given out post-COVID-19. Connected to this funding was a recent request from J.R. Stanley, the president of the Baskett Community Fire Department, who with the encouragement of resident Shannon Hill, asked for $10,000 from the fund to help pay for improvements at the department during a previous meeting. That request was not granted at that meeting. Magistrates said Tuesday dividing the money allows a fair split for all departments.
