A woman who operates the B & M mobile home park on the edge of Bryant has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the city is harassing her and her Hispanic tenants in a discriminatory effort to force them to leave the city.
The lawsuit alleges the mobile home park is subjected to inflated water and sewer bills, as well as arbitrary and selective enforcement of building codes and animal control ordinances. It also alleges that operator Mary Bivens' Hispanic tenants and their guests are arbitrarily and selectively stopped, inspected, searched and ticketed, and they are subject to having their vehicles impounded to force them to pay towing and storage fees.
It seeks an order permanently prohibiting the city from violating the Fourth, Fifth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as monetary damages to compensate Bivens for the "financially devastating" effect the actions have had on her 8.5-acre operation.
She said she and her late husband, Bennie Bivens, opened the mobile home park in 1970, and she has continued to operate it since his death in 2001. Tenants have moved out over the past three years, citing police and code enforcement harassment and high water and sewage rates, costing her more than $430,000 in revenue, she said.
Some of the mobile homes on the property are owned by their occupants, while others are owned by the mobile home park, according to the suit. It notes: "The majority of the clients of B & M are persons of Hispanic descent who are employed in Bryant and nearby communities as semi-skilled and day laborers at or slightly above the minimum wage, making it difficult for them to find affordable housing for themselves and their families, which often include small children."
Bryant City Attorney Chris Madison said Wednesday that the city had not been served with a copy of the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in federal court in Little Rock, and thus he didn't want to comment on it.
Bryant Public Works Director Monty Ledbetter said a reporter's telephone call was the first he had heard of the lawsuit, which focuses on water and sewer issues and frequently mentions his name, although the sole defendant is the city.
Ledbetter said he is familiar with water and sewer issues involving the mobile home park that date back years, but he denied that Bivens is charged more for those services than any other Bryant resident.
Ledbetter didn't dispute Bivens' assertion that in 2010 and 2011, she spent more than $250,000 to update the mobile home park's sewage system. He said her treatment facility had discharged sewage into a creek and resulted in the state Department of Environmental Quality fining her and forcing her to improve the operation.
Ledbetter said the "very cheap" pump station she built didn't meet city specifications, so it remains her own operation. But he said she was required to lay a pipe known as a "force-main," which met city specifications because it is in the city's right of way when it leaves her property.
Bivens said other people have since tied on to her line.
Ledbetter acknowledged that was true, saying "that's how sewer and water systems get built." But he declared as "totally false" the lawsuit's assertion he told Bivens that "some allowance would be made" in her future water and sewer bills because she installed the pipe.
The lawsuit alleges in the three years since, the city "has not only not provided any billing allowance ... but has more than doubled its charges to her."
It further alleges that Bivens' Hispanic tenants have been cited unfairly for minor issues -- such as cracked windowpanes and yard debris -- by city code enforcement officers, and that the city's Animal Control unit repeatedly has ticketed Hispanic owners of pets in the mobile home park for minor infractions such as temporarily removing leashes or collars and tags for grooming purposes.
It also says a tenant's dog, which had been a family pet for five years, was taken to the city pound, and a "notification delay" prevented the owner from claiming the dog before it was euthanized.
The lawsuit was filed by Little Rock attorney Sandy McMath. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr.
Metro on 08/20/2015