Posted: 9:00 a.m. Saturday, July 13, 2013

MIDDLETOWN

Ron McGlothlin, a Hamilton resident who owns property there and in Middletown, recently accused Community Revitalization Director Doug Adkins of “threatening” and “intimidating” opposing bidders at a 2011 Butler County Sheriff’s auction.

McGlothlin told City Council at its June 18 meeting that he sat next to Adkins at the auction, and when several Middletown homes came up for bid, Adkins stood up and declared that if anyone bought one of the properties, he was going to put it on the city’s demolition list. McGlothlin said Adkins was attempting to bully other bidders in order to sway things in the city’s favor and called his actions “unprofessional.”

“A lot of people didn’t like that very well. Many people quit bidding because of his actions, and the other people got very angry,” he said during the meeting. “Now some people, including myself, ignored his threats because…I figured he was either lying or bluffing.”

McGlothlin said he eventually bought two houses at that auction and “Doug never bothered me about either of them.” He asked council if he bought other properties that were currently on the city’s demolition list, would he be able to get them taken off of it.

Council didn’t give McGlothlin an immediate answer to his question, but Councilman Joe Mulligan did ask Adkins via email for his version of events at the auction. “There must’ve been some misunderstanding?” Mulligan wrote.

Adkins wrote he did go to the 2011 auction to purchase properties with the intent to demolish them and that some people were “furious that I was there.” He said he wasn’t threatening the other bidders, merely informing them “that they needed to base their willingness to purchase (from) that list of properties in light of our intentions to demolish the houses.”

Adkins said the homes in question, some of which he said were in “deplorable condition,” had been vacant for over a year — some up to four years — and had been through multiple sheriff’s sales with no one in the private sector wanting them enough to bid. “These are almost by definition, houses we do not want in our housing stock,” he wrote.

Adkins said he’s seen investors buy properties like these for less than $1,000 “slap a coat of paint on it and rent it for $600 to $800 per month. If we are going to change the culture in town, we have to demand more from the people who live and invest in our community.”

He said one of McGlothlin’s most telling comments from the June 18 meeting was that he used to do his business in Hamilton but the health department made him clean up his properties, so he moved his investing to Middletown.

“Franklin has cleaned up their practices, and so has Hamilton,” Adkins wrote. “By default, we became an easy place to invest and make the most profit after years of not adequately enforcing our property maintenance standards.”

Adkins acknowledged his work can be “aggravating” to people whose ideas run counter to the city’s direction, but “as long as I have the support of the city manager and council, I can hold the line and continue.”