Rule targets trashy yards

A former South Portland city employee claims her ‘disability’ behind recent termination

Anthoine Street resident Patricia Whittemore, an admitted
hoarder recently fired from her job in the South Portland
 Finance Department, looks over items stacked behind her
 garage. Whittemore worked Monday to clean her property
in advance of a City Council vote to created stiff new
rules to deal with yards deemed to be unsafe or unsanitary.

SOUTH PORTLAND — “It’s just crazy,” said Patricia Whittemore. “It’s absolutely nuts. It’s a nightmare. It’s all such a mess.”

But Whittemore was not referring to the condition of her Anthoine Street yard, as she worked Monday to clean away piles of clothing, toys and plastic detritus in advance of a South Portland City Council vote that night designed to, in the words of Mayor Patti Smith, “put some teeth” in a general nuisance ordinance.

Instead, Whittemore was referring to her termination from the South Portland Finance Department on Sept. 6, after 30 years with the city. An admitted hoarder, Whittemore says she feels compelled to shop, and then has trouble throwing anything away, for fear it might prove useful one day. The only way she can bear to part with anything, she says, is to let it fall into such a state of disrepair that it can’t possibly be of use to anyone.

“If I can’t use it, then I figure no one can,” she said.

But that behavior has meant heaps of apparent trash in Whittemore’s yard – rusted bicycles that may yet be saved, a net for a broken basketball hoop, toys her grandchildren might yet play with. There is an organizational pattern to it all, says Whittemore. It’s all “neatly stacked.”

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the patience of Whittemore’s neighbors wore thin in May, when 10 of them signed a petition against her under the city’s 1966 general nuisance rules. That has led to a change in the city ordinance, approved last night, which officials said they will immediately start to enforce, through fines and court action, on homeowners like Whittemore.

“Everybody loves our house,” said April Tracy, owner and frustrated seller of a home next to Whittemore’s on Columbus Avenue, at a Sept. 24 council workshop. “But then they say they’d never live in this neighborhood because of that other house.”

By that time, Whittemore had been out of work for three weeks, having been fired, she says, on Sept. 6. South Portland Human Resources Director Don Brewer declined to answer questions Monday, refusing even to confirm that Whittemore had even been employed by the city.

“I cannot comment at this time because it is an active personnel matter,” he wrote in an email.

City Manager Jim Gailey did confirm Whittemore worked for the city for “probably about” the number of decades she claims, but he also declined to say if, when or why she was terminated.

“I can’t say anything with something that’s in process,” he said.

On Monday, Whittemore showed a certified letter from the city accusing her of, among other things, calling one of the signatories against her property “a wife beater” while on the clock at City Hall, and within earshot of customers.

The “in process” comment, she said, could refer to severance she claims she was offered and refused, calling it “hush money.” Or it might mean the fact that she’s hired an attorney to fight her termination. Possibly, it’s a reference to the fact that she’s consulted with a civil rights attorney regarding what she calls an “11-year pattern of bullying” in the finance department, allegedly related to her hoarding disorder.

At any rate, it at least means action Code Enforcement Director Pat Doucette promised to take as soon as the general nuisance ordinance was updated, which the City Council did unanimously in final reading Monday.

“I guess you’re going to find out real quick if this language will hold up,” said Doucette, referring to her intent to take action under the updated ordinance against Whittemore and the 119/125 Wythburn Road home of Craig Patterson, which drew 23 petition signatures. Although both petitions were signed under the previous version of the ordinance, Doucette, said she would use them as a trigger to enforce the updated version.

Doucette has said she was unable to proceed against either Whittemore or Patterson under the previous ordinance, which dealt primarily with things like open wells and automobile “graveyards.” 

The new ordinance, which still allows 10 or more residents living within 500 feet of an offending home, defines a nuisance as, among other things, “the outdoor storage of any worn out, broken or worthless item” for more than 15 days. Those standards would apply throughout the city, regardless of zoning.

If the council finds after a public hearing that a nuisance does exist, and if 15 days pass with no action on a cleanup order, it can force the issue in front of a judge, including a request that the court levy fines as high as $2,500 per day, per violation.

The ordinance is retroactive to Sept. 24, when first presented to the council. Gailey said Tuesday “it would be up to the courts on how much and for what duration the fines are imposed,” leaving open the possibility that Whittemore and Patterson could be fined going back to the new ordinance’s effective date, despite recent cleanup attempts.

In her yard and nearly in tears, Whittemore did not seem much concerned with the fines. Instead, she fretted over being forced to throw away things that, she says, present no danger or health hazard to her neighbors.

“We do make full use of our yard,” said Whittemore. “I don’t throw anything out. But they can’t take away what we have. That’s just not OK.”

Worse, said Whittemore, is that her insurance runs out at the end of the month and that will be the end of the therapy she receives to combat her hoarding impulses.

“I really don’t like losing my job,” she said. “That doesn’t make me very happy. And the person I seen, he only takes private insurance. No MaineCare. So, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

“They made my life really miserable at work, but as long as I’m out of there, they don’t care,” she said.