Will Sherard, one of Milwaukee’s most notorious landlords, continues to thumb his nose at the federal government four years after the feds sued him over the poor condition of his properties.
“Sherard was to have twenty-nine (29) properties abated by the end of March 2009,” Assistant US Attorney Stacy Gerber Ward wrote in a court document late last month. “To date, the United States is aware of Sherard completing abatement work on only two (2) of those properties.”
The federal government now is asking a judge to order Sherard to put $550,00 into escrow and to appoint the City of Milwaukee Health Department to administer and oversee the repair work that Sherard has refused to do.
The feds’ showdown with Sherard has been in and out of US District Judge Joseph P. Stadtmueller’s courtoom for years.
A 2005 federal court consent decree required Sherard to complete window replacement and lead-based paint hazard abatement work on 39 residential properties by July 2008 and July 2010, respectively. He was found in contempt of court in July 2008 for failing to repair the properties. Stadtmueller set new deadlines and $500 daily fines for each property not repaired in a timely fashion. In February, the judge ordered Sherard to provide the government with a financial disclosure statement.
“The financial disclosure forms submitted by Mr. Sherard provided almost no information,” Gerber Ward wrote last month. “In regards to his income and other financial information, Mr. Sherard stated ’see tax returns.’ While Mr. Sherard’s tax returns do identify the various institutions in which he holds his assets and his dividend and/or interest income from these assets, the tax returns do not identify current balances or transactions that would be significant to the United States assessment of Mr. Sherard’s financial condition.”
Sherard told an official from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that “the work is expensive, that he did not anticipate these expenses, and he suggested that he did not have the funds to complete the work,” according to a government court filing. City of Milwaukee records, though, show that Sherard took out a total of about $1.7 million in mortgages on many of the properties he was supposed to fix right before and after signing the consent decree. The total estimated cost of the work on all the properties is $496,000. Another $30,000 or so is needed to pay for new or updated property assessments, according to court records.
The accumulated contempt penalties Sherard faces is more than $711,000, according to court documents.
Previous coverage of Sherard’s legal adventures is here.