Photo provided by Ashley Bain The burned out hulk on Seventh Street in Calumet is the former rectory of a former church. Arson was thought to have been the cause of a June, 2018 fire which began in the rear of the church, then spread to the house. The following winter, the church, which was not insured, collapsed, crushing the south wall of the Calumet Village Street Department Garage.

CALUMET — A Village Council trustee, and a former trustee, responded to a March 11, 2021, Daily Mining Gazette article in which Ashley and Andrew Bain said that since 2018, after a fire destroyed a house on Seventh Street, the couple has been trying to get some issues resolved with the village. Until recently, she and her husband have been trying an insurance check that was issued to the village for the clean-up of the Seventh Street property.

“I don’t believe they have any intention of returning the funds to the insured (us/my father-in-law) or our insurance company,” Ashley Bain stated in an email to the DMG.

Calumet Village came into possession of the insurance fire check as a result of its participation in the Michigan Fire Insurance Withholding Program through the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services.

The program is designed to provide municipalities with some financial protection against the cost of cleaning up a damaged structure following a fire loss. Participating municipalities may be eligible to receive a portion of a policyholder’s final settlement to be held in a specified escrow account until the structure is repaired, replaced, or demolished, at which time the escrow funds would be released by the municipality back to the property owner. If the property owner, in this case the Bains, does not repair the structure, the municipality may use the funds to repair, replace, or demolish the damaged structure.

In response to Bains’ allegations, Trustee Roxanne King stated in an email to the DMG that the Seventh Street structure receives regular mention during council meetings, and Village Manager Caleb Katz replied that nothing has happened and the owners have not contacted him.

King said that it is her understanding that the money the village is holding is an insurance hold-back, which is to be used to clean up the site if the owners fail to do so. So far, she said, they have failed to do so.

“This is a hold-back,” King explained, “meaning that the owners received something over a hundred thousand dollars in insurance money, and the village got 10% (or thereabouts; I don’t have the numbers here) as a reserve, so that if the owners took the money and vanished, there would be some money available to tear down the building. Since the building is still there, and demolished, and not repaired, why, yes, the village is keeping the money.”

In addition, King said, it appears that the Bains now own “the hole filled with bricks and debris where the church used to be,” that caved in about three years ago, causing severe damage to the Village Street Department garage next door.

The vacant church, owned by another party when it caved in, was not insured, leaving the village on the hook for the cost of repairs to the garage.

“Ask them what plans they have for that,” King suggested, adding that there is no money from anywhere to deal with cleaning that site up.

A former trustee who was on the Village Council at the time the Seventh Street home burned, which was adjacent to the church which later caved in, concurred with King that the owner of the former church had no insurance on the structure when it collapsed. Meanwhile when the house on Seventh Street burned, it was not owned by the Bains couple, but by one of their relatives, and the Bains were renting the property from that owner. Ashley Bains has since identified the owner as her father-in-law.

When the home burned, the owner filed a claim with his insurance company. In accordance with state law, the owner’s insurance company then notified the village of the filing, and asked if the village desired the company to withhold a portion of the claim, amounting to approximately $12,700.

Muddying the waters further, since the Bains did not own the house at the time it burned, the owner had to be the one to file the claim.

The former trustee said that the only way the check can be dispersed is for the former property owner to inform the village that he will clean the property up. He or she then has to provide proof that they did it. When the property is cleaned up, they would then be given the money, which is in escrow, because it is insurance money, and it is in their name.

As far as the Bains’ claim that the Village Street Department intentionally buried their property under snow, the source responded to that by saying the Street Department workers push the snowbanks back every spring, on every property, to expose the storm drains, so the ice they contain can thaw.