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RDA struggles to solve blight

Not many could argue with the fact that Warren County has a blighted property problem.

But the dollars and cents of addressing that problem continue to be a crippling problem for the Warren County Redevelopment Authority.

The discussion started with an update from Grants Administrator Lorri Dunlap about the Community Development Block Grant funds the RDA has at its disposal for addressing blighted properties.

She told the RDA that they have $4,700 to spend in CDBG funds by next June and that the RDA also has access to an additional $10,469 which the commissioners re-allocated to the RDA for blight.

That’s in addition to $30,000 in the county’s 2018 CDBG application which, Dunlap said, won’t be available to the RDA until next summer.

“There is no sense in us doing anything on any of these properties,” Authority Chairman Charles Barone said.

“You don’t have a lot of money,” Dunlap added.

Chief Clerk Pam Matve, who resigned her position on the RDA during Wednesday’s meeting, noted that there is a fee of up to $15 on deed transfers and new mortgages that could be implemented toward blight but “the county doesn’t want to do it.”

She said that if you’re going to by an $80,000 or $120,000 home that you are not “going to blink” on an extra $15 fee.

Dunlap noted that would generate approximately $15,000 to $20,000.

“We would have the funds… to do something,” Matve said.

County Planner Dan Glotz said that funding source wouldn’t “have the strings attached” that CDBG does.

Barone said he thinks “it’s fair to ask the municipalities to kick in” from a funding perspective.

Matve looked to the property owners themselves.

“There is no penalty for these people walking away from their properties,” she said. “We are never going to deal (with the) end issue.”

Dunlap said the “gain might be to the county” that if blighted buildings are demolished the “houses adjoining are going to hold their value better.”

Tax Claim Bureau Director Phil Gilbert suggested the RDA needs “some sort of incentive program… to entice people to buy these properties.”

Dunlap suggested that CDBG funds are “not being spent how it should” in that they have been used “not for demo but for legal fees.”

Matve highlighted the Warren County Redevelopment Task Force as having a “good group of volunteers that have time to look into various options and they are good options.”

“We’re seeing that this small table of people – small amount of money you have – isn’t doing the job,” Dunlap said of the RDA.

“Maybe the RDA needs to go back to the municipalities and request some help on these properties,” Glotz said. “(The) expenses (are) falling squarely on the shoulders of the RDA.”

“At the rate we’re going,” Barone said, “we can do one building a year if it’s not a big building.”

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