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Council Minutes of 02-02-10 the property. One of the ongoing problems is that when the bank goes through a foreclosure sale, the bank's not filing the deed to transfer the property into the bank's name. The result of that is the city has nobody responsible for property maintenance. His advice to anyone whose house is in foreclosure is to stay in the property until the court tells you to leave and then you can live there and take care of it. What's happening is they are leaving the property when the bank tells them to go, and then nobody takes care of it. Then the deed never gets filed. The property sits there, and it just continues to decay and rot. • The property at 25896 Butternut is an example of what he just described. The property was owned by anout-of--state couple and it's one of the historical homes in North Olmsted that was just simply rotting. The roof was going and the siding was falling off of it and it had been like that for a number of years. They will prosecute - file a property maintenance claim, take them to Rocky River Court and try to get a fine. In summer and late fall they saw the property improvements starting to take place because they had them in Rocky River Court. They ultimately were convicted of the property maintenance violations and required to pay a fine of $350 which is nothing compared to the people that had to live next door and look at a blighted house for the past four years. • Another example is the property at 6652 Charles. The owner has left the property and is bankrupt and the house is in foreclosure. You're not going to go to Rocky River and have somebody thrown in jail who is bankrupt and is not capable of taking care of the property. They were found guilty and fined $125. But, unlike Butternut, the property continues to rot. The Law Department vigorously pursued the mortgage holder. The bank got to the point where they threw their hands up, got tired of the Law Department and walked away from their lien. That left Plymouth Park Tax Service, which buys these tax certificates from the County that are delinquent and then they collect on them. They earn a very high rate of interest and they do absolutely nothing to take care of the property. They'll get paid first when it goes to a Sheriff's sale. There's no incentive for them to do a thing to preserve that property which brings him to the idea that Carole Heyward and the Law Department are exploring using the state's statues to intervene in these foreclosures to ask the Court to appoint a Receiver to have the property maintained and repaired and then the Receiver becomes a super lien which would come before Plymouth Park. This case is coming to a default hearing soon despite the fact the city got their conviction of a $125 from the unfortunate property owner who fell into some difficult times. The Law Department, with the Administration, is looking at some very creative ways to try to address these issues. Finance Director Copfer: • 2009 year-end internal revenue and expense detail and summary reports were sent out today. While she has been busy checking for accuracy of the year-end information, she does have indications of the results of the general fund that revenues ended 1.6% over the plan and 9.5% over last year's actual. That's about 4