The biggest challenge that the county’s Redevelopment Authority faces is the lack of funding to tackle blight and redevelopment projects.

They heard on Wednesday about a possibility to address that challenge – the formation of a county land bank.

A land bank is a “governmental or nonprofit authority created to acquire, maintain, and stabilize vacant, abandoned, and tax-delinquent properties while working with other entities to promote the productive reuse of the properties,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said the proposal is to turn the RDA into a landbank.

Phil Gilbert, who chairs the RDA, said the move wouldn’t create a new organization but would add “a little oomph” to what the RDA can do.

Eggleston said there are 25 land banks across the state with the closest being Venango County and two in Erie County.

He stressed that this structure gives the RDA an “easier path to acquiring property.” The program would be run at the county level, he explained, with municipalities and the school district — if amenable — joining by intergovernmental agreements. Those agreements would be needed “in order to have a portion of whatever taxes are collected” by a property redeveloped by the land bank go back to the land bank to fund its operations.

He said a land ban “creates this understood collaboration within the community to encourage redevelopment and also help fund the RDA as an entity.

“This is a method to create channels” to remove some of the “negatives” that can come with these properties. “(If we) can take some of those negatives away, (they will be) more attractive to turn over to someone to redevelop.”

The structure would all the RDA more control to where a property is transferred and is “not a method to just turn properties over.”

Eggleston called it “another step” in the county’s decade old blight process.

Gilbert said the law would allow a land bank to jump the line at tax sales, as well.

The big issue is always how to fund an initiative and that’s no exception here.

Eggleston called that an “entirely separate discussion that needs to be had. (It is) rare that they completely are self-financing.”

Future presentations on the possibility will be made to the commissioners, the Council of Governments, the City of Warren and reasonably the Warren County School District.

“Doing this project jointly makes a whole lot of sense,” County Planner Dan Glotz said.

“I think we need it,” Authority member Chuck Barone added.

Authority member Joe Whipp asked for additional time to review the information.

“It all sounds wonderful,” he said. “(There is) always a bad side to everything.” He said he’d like to hear from other counties on what challenges they have faced in this process.

Gilbert, who is also the county tax claim director, said he sees properties selling at tax sale and then new owners “don’t do anything with it.’

“It’s not working,” he said, suggesting the need for the RDA “to step in” and come up with a creative solution. “This is perfect.”

“(It) just seems like a real positive,” Glotz said.