Advertisement
David Huth paid $35,500 for the untillable, hill-hugging plot formerly owned by Robert Bayliss, who is in the Richland County jail awaiting trial on numerous charges accumulated during a three-day confrontation. Eventually, an uninjured Bayliss was smoked out of his house, which burned. Dozens of officers and deputies and various emergency officials from several counties converged on the area outside of Viola. No officers were injured, though assault vehicles were damaged by rifle fire.
The shootout stemmed from a spectacularly unsuccessful legal paper delivery. In the first confrontation, deputies had arrived with “civil process papers” related to nonpayment of property taxes from 2000 to 2006. With interest, Bayliss owed $6,509.44 in property taxes on his 18-acre parcel, which in 2007 was assessed at $30,500. He bought it unimproved on a land contract in 1974 for about $7,000, but the county had legally taken over the property months earlier.
After the shootout, officials decided to sell the property and hoped for a minimum bid of $40,000. County clerk Victor V. Vlasak said this week, however, that only two bids were received, and Huth’s $35,500 bid was the highest. (The other was for $35,000.)
Huth said a condition of the purchase was that he clean up the property, which is filled with scrap and debris. No structures were left on the property when he took it over, he said.
What will happen with the $35,500 is a question that has not been answered yet, said county corporation counsel Ben Southwick.
“Under the statutes, the county deducts several things from the gross sale price,” he said.
“We deduct all of our costs of the sale, and all taxes due, and all expenses the county incurred in causing the property to be sold,” he said.
Those cost haven’t been added up yet, he said.
The county is required to give Bayliss notice that he can make a claim on the net proceeds, too, Southwick said.
Yet to be determined is whether the county will reimburse itself for costs related to the shootout, said Southwick. “There comes a point when the actions cease to be part of the tax sale and begin to relate to law enforcement,” he said.
“I don’t know if whether there is a circumstance where (Bayliss) is liable for the cost of law enforcement.“
A lawsuit could be filed, or the County Board could pass a law specific to the costs.
“There are unanswered questions here,” he said.
Sheriff Darrell Berglin said he has not separated bills specific to the confrontation. “I have been paying the bills as they come in,” he said.
Other counties may be submitting bills, and some agencies may be writing the event off as a training exercise, he said.
Bayliss has no money aside from what he received for a cache of silver recovered from a metal ammo box in his truck, variously estimated as worth $8,000 to $12,000. Beyond that, Bayliss has said, he salvaged a black leather boot. Though offered, he has refused to be represented by public defenders.
Bayliss was first recorded for nonpayment of property taxes in 2000, when, he claimed, a mail mix-up resulted in a late payment, which led to a tax delinquency notice. He had also engaged in a running dispute with county officials over damage to the well on his property caused, he said, by rocks filling the well during road construction.
His trial is tentatively set for Feb. 2.
