Bangor’s city council chair has registered her vacant home after avoiding registration and the accompanying fees to the city for years.
The Buck Street home owned by City Councilor Susan Hawes and her husband appeared on an updated vacant property list that the city provided to the Bangor Daily News this week. City spokesperson David Warren confirmed that they paid the $500 initial registration fee.
The registration puts Hawes in compliance with the city’s vacant property ordinance, which Hawes herself voted for as a councilor in 2013. But the city does not have plans to recuperate the additional $16,500 the couple would have accrued in fees if they had registered the home when they bought it six years ago, according to Warren.
“Irrespective of the party involved, the City generally tries to work with a party to move toward compliance without having to impose punitive measures. In this particular case, the party is now in compliance and no other action is being considered,” Warren said.
The property, which is next door to the couple’s primary residence on Buck Street, has been empty since Hawes and her husband bought it in 2020, she previously told the BDN.
In those six years, they would have been charged $17,000 in recurring registration fees, which increase over time, if the home had been registered.
Several residents criticized Hawes for her failure to register the property at a council meeting last week, the first since the BDN reported on the vacant property.
Former City Councilor Hal Wheeler called the situation “an embarrassment that could have been avoided.”
“If an ordinary resident would be held accountable for failing to register an empty property, then a councilor who fails to do so should be also equally held accountable,” Joe Bowman noted. “It undermines confidence in city government.”
Hawes did not address the criticisms during last week’s meeting, nor did she immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
For more than a decade, Bangor has required property owners to register vacant homes and pay a fee, a measure that stemmed from concerns about abandoned properties and has since evolved into a tool to combat the city’s affordable housing shortage.
City code classifies any building that’s been unoccupied for 60 days as vacant, except garages or accessory buildings. Owners of vacant buildings in certain zoning districts, including the one where Hawes’ home is located, must register them and pay fees every six months. There are few exceptions, such as for active duty military members or people who summer in Maine.
“I never gave it a thought,” Hawes previously told the BDN when asked why she hadn’t registered the house as a vacant building.
Jeff Labree, Bangor’s code enforcement director, told the BDN earlier this month that his department had recently become aware that the property was vacant and spoke with the owners.