What the city wants is the fair thing, it wants him to clean up his property, its method to do that is to issue citations, and charge penalties for failing to do so. It has said, even today, that it wants to work with him to get a reasonable solution. The headline grabbing fine is the result of a judge saying, your appeal is not valid, therefore you owe the default penalty. $250/day fine for 8 years.

What he wants is to not have the law apply to him, and that's his defense in court, which leads to his "appeal" getting shut down. Which means the ruling just says "you owe the fines". That's how the law works.

The city offers many ways to work through these things before you get fined, and offers many ways to make fines manageable.

But none of that works, if the person is literally refusing to accept that the law applies to him.

I am unsure what you think the correct response is?

The city has said it wants to work with him. The city has been saying that since 2014.

What you seem to be saying is that people should simply be able to say the law does not apply to them, and then simply not follow the law? In response to a a traffic fine, should you simply be allowed to ignore it indefinitely?

If he really can't afford it, that's what bankruptcy (and its exemptions like a personal home) is for, though given how much he's ignored for that eight years it might take a court-appointed attorney to do it for him.

Fines may be attached to the property, not the person, so bankruptcy may not remove the claim.