I commend Brenda Erdahl for the story and Nick Pawlenty, for the photograph. I think both will result in a better understanding of what this current City Council has been “INAPPROPRIATELY” focused on. This is my response. Thank you, Messenger, for this opportunity:
It’s been almost a whole lifetime that I have lived in Maple Lake and my first introduction to the City’s way of doing business was over 50 years ago when I appeared before a Council meeting in a small building under the old water tower, asking for the city maintenance worker to repair a water leak between my home and the lumber yard. Mayor Mooney presided and while chomping on his cigar, scolded me with, “Who the hell do you think you are coming up here, telling us what to do? Turned out it was a leak on a PRIVATE waterline in the middle of the street, almost a block away from my residence, yet I was responsible for repairs. My eventual long delayed response was to finally file for council, and I won, serving from 1977-1981. Once elected, my goal was to always be welcoming and as best I could, defend the underdogs appearing before us, yet advocate for our city and help people with proposals, issues, and/or problems.
It had been some time since my first term on the Council that the City confronted me with “nuisance ordinance violations,” which were not resolved until I was able to secure the services of our Chief of Police, Harold Anderson’s attorney, Pat Tierney of Collins Buckley, Santry, and Howe (St. Paul), with his telling the firm that I was being unjustly persecuted/ prosecuted and charged with insignificant issues. The case ultimately ended up in federal court, before Judge Miles Lord. The City was forced to pay all attorney fees and legal expenses along with actual, punitive, and other damages. They were further required to issue me a “public apology.” They had taken items from outside my home not specifically identified by the Court as being a “Nuisance,” including a set of WW2 tank ramps, my great grandmother’s outside “gypsy furniture,” etc. Some was secretly taken, while I was at work and all was haphazardly stored in the city maintenance building, much of it not accounted for and then mysteriously lost. As I recall, my attorney sued the city for around a half million dollars, but I only recovered minimal damages, based on the city’s ability to pay. Unfortunately, Mr. Tierney has now retired but recalls all this history. Since this is a civil matter, I am not entitled to a public defender, but the court has provided me with “forma pauperis” status and use of the law library, which has been tremendously helpful.
Over the years since that horrible ordeal, there have been City concerns which I have always addressed and continue to address, right up to the present. After purchasing the old Wright Hennepin building to fulfill a lifelong dream of developing my own private museum and a flea market, I was asked to complete erecting a white security fence. I was also asked to erect a gate to this area and to further screen this area with trees, all of which I willingly and happily agreed to do. Later I screened the area to the south of that flea market stockade with a wood fence and shrubs. I mortgaged my home to the maximum so I could spend around $40,000 for a new roof on the museum (without council direction), before they recently deemed it a “hazardous building.” Never was there or had there been an issue of living in and/ or owning “hazardous buildings” needing to be “bulldozed,” or worse yet, “vermin” running a “junkyard” that was lowering in-town property values for Mr. John Rivers, certainly no more than either neighboring elevator grain dust/ rat issues or the deafening railroad airhorn noise issue, would do.
That brings us to the present, this action initiated by Deb Geyen as Mayor, shortly before she resigned her position, and carried on with John Rivers and his less than a handful of equal-minded individuals, warmly welcomed to City Council meetings to share his thoughts. There was that and, those secret negotiations the City Council had with our City Attorney Bob Alsop, both costly and unnecessary. Mr. Alsop was authorized by this council to get a “Search Warrant,” for Code Enforcer Tracy Reiman, to enter my buildings to look for “code violations,” which was particularly irksome given my being on the Council and my undivided attention to being cooperative soas to save potential costs and fees, for both myself and/ or Maple Lake taxpayers. He agreed to drop all search warrant findings for building interiors, an agreement he now states he “doesn’t recall,” yet fails to outright deny.
Despite numerous requests, I was never allowed to see what the provisions for removal were or what items would be included (secret meetings). Imagine my surprise when finally finding out I had 50 automobiles that never existed, that I was to pay $400 each to have them removed and stored (tens of thousands of dollars of the multi hundred-thousand dollars contract with Junk Removers). Nothing apparently was sorted out as to be nonexistent, never a nuisance issue, an abated nuisance issue previously remedied, and most concerning, a progress report giving status of final tasks I was required to complete. Instead of recognizing compliance with temporarily removing outside stored items into trailers or storage buildings as previously requested and complied with, I have now been told those very trailers I had purchased and filled with such items, are now to be taken as well. In fact, the Council apparently now feels they can identify anything as a nuisance and make taxpayers and/ or me pay for the removal. A motion to the court, restraining the city and/ or Junk Masters to better clarify what the city can have Junk Masters take, or better yet drop this case, for numerous reasons, was approved and will be heard June 25. The City has a record of ignoring such specific guidelines and appears to have felt they can now interpret everything I have stored outside is a nuisance and has court approval to “abate.” Given their record of deception and secrecy, I will also request that I be present when they do their “removal,” to insure they follow and comply with court orders.
Anyway, our mayor on behalf of the entire council, without remorse or “compassion,” went on record justifying their action to sign this second agreement and to saddle taxpayers and/ or me with charges amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the thought in mind that ALL costs would eventually fall back on me, the defendant previously granted “forma pauperis” status by the court, to defend himself in this CIVIL action. I was ineligible for a “public defender,” given this was not a Criminal matter, yet potentially I could ultimately face exorbitant costs far outdistancing settlements in criminal cases involving murder. I filed appeals to the Appellate and Supreme Courts regarding this most recent action but apparently because the requested trial transcripts did not arrive in time, the case was rejected…NOT because of merit but because of the court reporter NOT meeting a submission deadline. I have now been fighting this City lawsuit against me more vigorously than ever, after one of two sympathetic city administrators alerted me to the fact that the City has gone way beyond original nuisance issues, with a gung ho clear cut mentality, to have Junk Masters enter my properties and haul off everything outside the buildings, regardless of previous council acceptance showing items no longer considered to be nuisance issues.
I hope this has all been worthwhile for our citizens to review. As a Council member, I have asked for the complete rejection of our existing, much maligned 20-some page nuisance ordinance, subject to discretionary/ discriminatory interpretation, replacing it with the League of Minnesota Cities Model Nuisance, half that long and more directly to the point of what a nuisance REALLY is and how to fairly and justly deal with such issues.
The potential outcome with my case remains a very important issue for our city. Will they be able to prosecute businesses with outside storage of their resale items, vehicles not parked inside an enclosed building and possession of outside storage container units? The list goes on. It has been wonderful watching comments on social media after this news story appeared in the Messenger. People don’t want their hard-earned tax dollars spent fighting nuisance issue battles with a compliant peer doing all he can to meet their demands. Let’s start with canceling this contract with Junk Masters, identify what is left to be done mutually agreeable to the council, the public, and to me. I am on this council, apparently once again to defend against this kind of council lack of empathy and probably most importantly, the encouraging and pandering to the “haters” amongst us.
Sincerely,
John Haack
Maple Lake