FIXER-UPPER: Two-story income property blighting cozy Hill Section neighborhood. Multiple uninhabitable rental units, on-street parking and motivated seller. Damaged by fire in 2017. Condemned and targeted for demolition, but somehow still standing. Minimum bid: $11,298.15.
The charred husk of 1620-1622 Pine St. is one of eight PSN Realty properties listed for auction in the Sept. 30 “upset” sale by the Lackawanna County Tax Claim Bureau.
Regular readers recognize PSN Realty as the ramshackle alter ego of Ken Bond, Scranton’s most notorious landlord and tax and garbage fee deadbeat.
Since his first appearance in this column back in April, Bond has become the sneering face of local government’s chronic failure to hold scofflaws accountable at the eternal expense of taxpayers who play by the rules.
In April, I reported that Bond owed $125,375.99 in delinquent garbage fees, by far the biggest offender in the city’s deadbeat database. Four months later, Bond is still stiffing the city with impunity. As of Tuesday, PSN Realty’s unpaid trash tab is $129,102.41 — still the largest and still piling up while honest property owners carry the weight.
Stunned that Bond owes more now than he did in April, I called Northeast Revenue Service, which collects delinquent taxes and trash fees for the city. No NRS employees have been charged, but the firm played key roles in the pay-to-play-related downfalls of felonious former Mayors Bill Courtright of Scranton and Ed Pawlowski of Allentown.
Pawlowski is serving a 15-year sentence in a federal prison. Courtright will be sentenced in November.
No one from NRS returned my call. City council and Mayor Wayne Evans are considering termination of the firm’s contract. The question I have for all three: How is it that after four months, the city’s biggest deadbeat owes more?
On the eight properties in the upset sale, Bond owes a combined $59,922.93 in back taxes and fees. He owes $11,298.15 in back taxes and fees on 1620-1622 Pine St. alone. That number is the minimum bid on the property, but could change by the sale Sept. 30 at 10 a.m. at the Lackawanna County Courthouse, Joseph Joyce, acting deputy director of the Tax Claim Bureau, told me.
It’s also possible Bond will follow past practice and make partial payments to keep some of his properties out of the sale. That seems unlikely for the Pine Street hulk. It’s been condemned, and Bond also owes $22,988 in garbage fees on the property.
Bond declined comment on the upset sale. “I go through this every year,” he said. Bond said he might have something more to say later in the day. He didn’t call back.
If 1620-1622 Pine is ever demolished, taxpayers will get the bill. City engineers inspected the wreck and determined it structurally sound, Evans said. Because it’s not in danger of collapse, the city can’t justify an emergency demolition order.
The city budget has money earmarked for demolitions, however, and officials are working on a list of priority properties to be razed.
“That one (1620-1622 Pine) is very high on the list as far as I’m concerned,” Evans said. “The neighbors deserve relief. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, and that property has been a bane of their existence.”
Ken Bond bought his fixer-upper for $60,000 in 2007. Ever since, it’s been dragging down a good neighborhood he never called home.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, wonders aloud what the candidates in the special mayoral election plan to do about parasites like Ken Bond. Contact the writer: email@example.com, @cjkink on Twitter. Read his award-winning blog at times