The Warren County Redevelopment Authority has signed off on all the documents needed to get a proposed land bank up and running.

During a Tuesday meeting, the board approved bylaws, policies and procedures, an intergovernmental cooperative agreement and sample resolution that will be distributed to the county’s municipalities that wish to join the effort.

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 documents have been reviewed by Andrea Stapleford, RDA solicitor. The bylaws lay out a board comprised of the five members of the Redevelopment Authority plus two additional members, likely representation from the City of Warren which has its own RDA but doesn’t meet population requirements to have its own landbank. Authority member Chuck Barone asked what provisions allow the land bank to get hold of a property.

“(We) have to have a willing participant to give us property,” Eggleston said. “This just shortens the time frame it is going to take.”

Eggleston explained that this can cut significant time out of the delinquent tax process.

“Most of the properties we deal with are tax delinquent,” he said. “Right now, we have to wait several years” for the process to unfold. “The goal here is to move faster (but) not so fast that we make mistakes.”

Authority member Joe Whipp asked what incentive the Warren County School District would have to sign on to this initiative.

“If they want me to vote for reassessment, they’ll pass it,” Eggleston said. “I feel pretty confident that the school district will be interested in this. Again, (this is) another tool to help get these properties on the tax rolls anyway. That would be the incentive for them.”

The land bank would be funded in part by 50% of the taxes generated by a property it turns around coming back to the land bank for five years. Eggleston said that the school district’s burden would be that tax portion but he acknowledged that many such properties aren’t producing taxes not anyway.

He acknowledged that the “most important people” to sign on are the individual municipalities.