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✚ Living Next to Trash
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Later, Sherrod says, she complained to L&I and the police without success. “I did try to have them remove the stuff, but it hasn’t, as you can see, been removed.” Sherrod, who was a panelist in a 2010 roundtable discussion about combating blight in Point Breeze, also acknowledges the police and L&I have “no records” of her complaints. She says she doesn’t know why that is. L&I spokesperson Rebecca Swanson confirms there’s no record of complaints from Sherrod and says she’s not sure how Plummer could dump on Sherrod’s land without Sherrod’s consent. “If someone goes and puts up a fence, that’s trespassing. My sense is, that’s a criminal offense,” she says. There is a record, however, of Rose’s complaints. But Swanson says that the complaints were automatically referred to the Community Life Improvement Program (CLIP), a neighborhood cleanup program. CLIP doesn’t have the authority to bypass fencing to remove the trash, so it could not clean the lots. CLIP did log complaints against each individual lot owner, including Sherrod, for trash and failure to obtain vacant lot licenses. But rather than appeal the complaint and call out Plummer for the dumping, Sherrod did nothing. The complaints against Sherrod and the other lot owners are still outstanding, and the lots remained unlicensed. Sherrod says she wants to sell her land. She alludes to a plan to clean up and develop the entire site in the near future. Indeed, three of the lots, including Sherrod’s, have been listed for sale since the beginning of the year, at $100,000 apiece. Sherrod also references a “new owner” who is going to stop Plummer’s dumping, but declines to name the individual. The only lot that has changed hands in the last decade is now owned by a 401(k) plan registered to the Richboro, Pa., home of Vitaliy Polyachenko, who says he is indeed interested in developing his newly purchased lot. But Polyachenko’s explanations only raise more questions. Reached by phone, he initially said that he wished the dumping would stop. Later he revealed that he had actually hired Plummer in the past for contracting work and that they were in regular contact. He disputed Sherrod’s suggestion that there were any immediate plans to develop the lots or to put an end to the trash. “I met [Plummer] several times and spoke with him,” Polyachenko says. “He says, ‘Well, no one else complained, and I’m doing some work for the city.’ So what can I do?” Though DD Fox Construction is a licensed contractor, L&I officials say it has not been approved for municipal contracting work. Polyachenko says, “I’ve only owned the lot for a few months, but Claudia and these other guys owned theirs for six or seven years and they never complained.” Records indicate that two of the other lot owners may be deceased; one of them has been tax delinquent for more than 20 years and has dozens of liens against the parcel. Polyachenko says
that the only other living deed holders he has encountered, the owners of nearby granite company CAVA International, are OK with the dumping. CAVA’s owners did not respond to requests for comment. Polyachenko says he hasn’t tried to stop the dumping on his lot — yet. “I just never put any legal force into it, because I’m not planning to do anything with that lot tomorrow,” he says. “As for Sherrod and the others? Maybe they have been in some kind of agreement or they don’t care, I don’t know. Claudia has some power. I don’t know why she didn’t move him out.” L&I is now monitoring the lot for continued dumping. But, unless the property owners come forward to complain or L&I happens to catch Plummer’s crew in
Polyachenko says he hasn’t tried to stop the dumping on his lot — yet. the act, Rose could be waiting a long time for a cleanup. Since one of the lots is tax delinquent, sheriff’s sale would be an option; but the sheriff’s sale process is, these days, a slow one. L&I referred the case to the city Law Department last August. But that case was against an owner of one of the lots, not Plummer, because no trespassing complaints had been recorded. In the end, that action was indefinitely delayed because of “staffing constraints” at the Law Department and the “non-dangerous” nature of the complaint, Swanson says. All this raises a question: In a city where abandoned properties abound and enforcers can’t keep up, what’s to stop any rogue contractor from turning any piece of vacant land into their private, fenced-in garbage dump? As Rose’s predicament shows, there’s not much to stand in their way. (ryan.briggs@citypaper.net)