The old Chieftain Motel isn’t the only property sitting at the top of the City of Bremerton’s cleanup list.
Following a brief executive session during a Weds., Sept. 19, business meeting, the city council voted unanimously to allow City Attorney Roger Lubovich to pursue enforcement and legal action regarding the motel and a separate property at 1926 North Callow Ave.
Lubovich said that the police have responded to 78 calls to the hotel in the last eight months and that the new owners have so far failed to obtain a certificate of occupancy and therefore can’t get a business license through the city.
In addition, county prosecutors are now targeting the motel with legal action for failing state Dept. of Health inspections and lacking a transient accommodation license.
Lubovich said that the county’s effort to get an injunction to close the motel is separate from the city’s efforts to bring it into compliance.
“The owner has been working with us, taking it day by day,” Lubovich said. “Our highest priority is the safety issue. If somebody gets hurt and we know about it, we’ve got issues.”
Lubovich said that he got a call from Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge about the state violations shortly after the city began targeting the Chieftain for cleanup.
“It was just coincidental that they came up at the same time,” Lubovich said.
The Callow Avenue property cleanup is one that the city is, so far, flying solo on. Lubovich described it as a residence that’s been sitting empty for two years that used to have a car repair shop in a big shed in its backyard.
“There’s trash all over the place and it’s in a nice neighborhood,” Lubovich said. “There are barrels of stuff back there and we don’t know if its got oil in it or what. We just can’t accept it the way it’s sitting.”
Lubovich said that a man named Robert Bottorff is listed as the property owner on the deed, but efforts to locate him have been unsuccessful.
“We’ll probably have to file some sort of lawsuit to get authority to go clean it up,” Lubovich said. “We want to try and clean up the outside and secure the builduing and then we’ll see what happens.”
