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The Bangor City Council doesn’t currently have plans to address the failure of its chair to register a vacant property she owns.
For years, council Chair Susan Hawes has owned an unregistered vacant home and avoided paying $17,000 in fees to the city during that time, the Bangor Daily News reported Tuesday.
The news has sparked frustration among some residents who want to see the council take action, but it’s unclear how Hawes’ colleagues would address the issue or if it’s in their purview to do so.
“It’s an issue between her and the city itself,” Councilor Michael Beck said, noting that the City Council creates policy but does not enforce it. That work falls instead to city staff.
That said, Beck added that “the public is not wrong” in feeling it’s unfair for Hawes to avoid the registration and fees required by city rules. “I’ve got a lot of feedback from people who are saying this feels like, ‘rules for thee but not for me,’” he said.
Similarly, Councilor Susan Faloon said she believed Hawes’ registration and fees should be brought up to date and that councilors should be careful not to make it look like the rules don’t apply to them. She expected the council might discuss the issue with the city solicitor but wasn’t sure what action it would take, if any.
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.
“It’s an incentive for people to do something with that building,” Faloon said of the registry.
The BDN reached out to all eight of Hawes’ fellow councilors Thursday seeking comment. Only Beck and Faloon responded.
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.
Hawes and her husband have owned the home next door to their primary residence for six years, and no one has lived there during that time, the BDN previously reported. Hawes said they’ve been working on fixing up the home and will probably register it as vacant until it’s ready to be lived in. The city’s code enforcement director previously confirmed he’d been in touch with the owners about the property.
Hawes herself, a longtime councilor, voted for the abandoned building ordinance that created the registry in 2013 and again to hike the fees in 2023. She’s also highlighted the idea of turning blighted buildings into affordable housing as part of her campaigns for council.
“I never gave it a thought,” Hawes told the BDN last week when asked why she hadn’t registered the house as a vacant building.
Although he doesn’t believe City Council action is the appropriate avenue to address the rule violation, Beck suggested it could be helpful for Hawes to address it directly with the public.
Speaking as a resident, Beck said he’d like to hear from her regarding, “How are you going to make this right?”