RPC discusses possibility of county land bank

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

What do you do with blighted properties?

The Craw­ford County Regional Plan­ning Com­mis­sion dis­cussed that ques­tion at its monthly meet­ing Wednes­day, Feb. 22. Recent revi­sions to a sec­tion of the Ohio Revised Code have allowed local com­mu­ni­ties to form “land banks” to deal with dilap­i­dated, unsafe prop­er­ties. RPC direc­tor Michael McBeth out­lined what a land bank could accom­plish in Craw­ford County and what it would take to start one.

A “blighted prop­erty,” legally speak­ing, is gen­er­ally unin­hab­it­able, unsafe, aban­doned for a spe­cific time period (such as a year) and an immi­nent dan­ger to other peo­ple or prop­erty. Fore­clo­sures con­tribute to the rise of blighted prop­er­ties, McBeth said. Fore­clo­sure fil­ings in Craw­ford County rose almost ten­fold from 1995 to 2010 accord­ing to data col­lected by the Ohio Supreme Court.

A land bank is a pub­lic author­ity that can hold, man­age and develop tax-foreclosed prop­erty. Those prop­er­ties have to go through nor­mal fore­clo­sure processes, includ­ing a sheriff’s sale, so by the time a land bank acquires a prop­erty, it’s already been put up for auc­tion and failed to sell.

Land banks act as a legal mech­a­nism to turn aban­doned prop­er­ties to good use, McBeth said, and encour­age rede­vel­op­ment in older com­mu­ni­ties or neigh­bor­hoods that have lost res­i­dents and busi­nesses. Land banks can also help in plan­ning long-term com­mu­nity development.

The RPC could coor­di­nate the land bank process, said McBeth, and could use the coun­ty­wide Geo­graphic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem to assem­ble data on fore­closed prop­er­ties and develop maps.

RPC mem­bers were told that the county would have to divert some prop­erty tax to start the land bank, but after that it would the­o­ret­i­cally be self-supporting. But before decid­ing whether to estab­lish a land bank, McBeth said the county should assess the prob­lem using local data sources on tax delin­quency, vacant lots, fore­closed prop­er­ties and prop­er­ties that cities already main­tain (i.e. mow­ing in the summer).

In other busi­ness, McBeth reported that envi­ron­men­tal reviews had been com­pleted on the major­ity of the cur­rent Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment Block Grant projects and were under way on the rest.

Seven inter­ven­ers have filed with the Ohio Power Sit­ing Board for a rehear­ing on the Black Fork wind energy project.

The county com­mis­sion­ers said they were await­ing a deci­sion on their final offer to buy the old K-Mart build­ing in Bucyrus for the county recy­cling pro­gram. They are also work­ing with an archi­tect on plans to ren­o­vate the county courthouse.

Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion edu­ca­tor Steve Pro­chaska will tran­si­tion to the regional office in Fre­mont to serve as regional educator.

The county 4-H coor­di­na­tor will stay on. Craw­ford County won’t have an exten­sion edu­ca­tor of its own after Pro­chaska moves, accord­ing to com­mis­sioner Doug Weise­nauer, since few peo­ple apply for the job. It requires a Master’s degree in agriculture.

The town­ships are patch­ing pot­holes while the snow holds off. Polk Town­ship is still work­ing on build­ing a mate­r­ial build­ing to house road salt. All the bids to build it came over bud­get, accord­ing to town­ship trustee Glenn Cheesman.

Kate Siefert from the Craw­ford County Gen­eral Health Dis­trict told trustees that the Ohio Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency is prepar­ing to reg­u­late some town­ship build­ings to keep water runoff controlled.

It may affect con­struc­tion of town­ship salt build­ings, she said.

The Regional Plan­ning Com­mis­sion will hold its next meet­ing at 7 p.m. Wednes­day, March 28, at the Craw­ford County engineer’s office at 815 Whet­stone Street, Bucyrus. The pub­lic is encour­aged to attend.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Feb 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.