BY DAN HILDEBRAN
General manager
A brother and sister are facing a $500-a-day fine from the City of Starke for allowing excessive vegetation to grow on their Pratt Street property, allowing the home on the land to fall into dangerous disrepair, and failing to show up for five code enforcement hearings.
Gordan Brown and Betty Dilts are listed as the owners of the single-family residence at 525 West Pratt Street. According to county records, Brown also owns a mobile home on nearly seven acres on Southeast 144th Street, and one media source places Dilts’s residence in Michigan.
After an October 10 hearing, Special Magistrate Laura Gapske issued an order fining the pair $4,200 and ordering a lien on the residence for that amount. She also assessed additional fines of $ 250 a day for 30 days beginning on October 10 and wrote that if the violations were not remedied by November 14, she might penalize the property owners $500 a day.
The case against the brother and sister started on January 7, 2022, when an inspection revealed the violations.
Since that time, follow-up inspections showed no improvements to the property. Code enforcement officer Glen Ward reported during the October hearing that the property is overgrown to the point of being a habitat for snakes and is a public nuisance.
Although Gapske ruled the property owners had received proper notice of the violations and the hearings, the notices were mailed to the property address and not Brown’s post office box listed on property appraiser records, and all the notices mailed to 525 West Pratt Street were returned to the city unserved. Prior to the July hearing, a code enforcement officer reported that one notice posted on the door of the property had been removed.
