LAND BANK PROJECTS
Moving Ohio Forward: 512
Hardest Hit Funds:
Hamilton — 130
Middletown — 36
Fairfield Twp. — 2
Delinquent Tax Assessment Collections (DTAC)
City of Hamilton — $16,500 - approved June 2015
Ross Twp. — $5,000 approved June 2015
Ross Twp. — $10,000 for a commercial property - denied January 2016
Wayne Twp. — $9,100 - approved July 2016
The Butler County land bank board is considering asking the county commissioners for a larger slice of delinquent tax funds, to increase the scope of their blight busting in other areas of the county.
Kathy Dudley, Hamilton’s staff attorney who works on land bank business, said the 1 percent allotment of delinquent tax assessment collections funds, called DTAC funds, has been very beneficial. DTAC funds are late payment penalties on real estate taxes.
“The use of the DTAC money to date has been helpful throughout the county,” Dudley said. “The extra money would enable further utilization of the land bank for the various townships and cities that have joined. In light of state cutbacks to townships and cities, anytime they are able to leverage money there is a benefit to the taxpayer.”
DTAC brought in a total $14.3 million and $131,701 to the land bank this year. An increase to five percent would yield $658,000. County Treasurer Nancy Nix, who chairs the lad bank board, said she and Executive Directer Mike McNamara have been surveying the large counties in the state and 11 of 12 all are collecting five percent.
Commissioners Don Dixon and T.C. Rogers, who are both on the land bank board said they will listen to what Nix and McNamara have to say but are not certain that is the direction they’ll take, especially since the schools and other taxing districts will be impacted.
“I need somebody to make the case for how this is going to benefit, how it’s going to increase the impact of what we’re doing now,” Dixon said. “Right now they are doing a heck of a good job sand we’re utilizing money that’s out from the system for the bulk of it, but we’re also using DTAC money to help keep us in the position that we can meet the match. My knee jerk reaction is I need to understand what they need more money for.”
The Lakota Schools did not comment on the 5 percent proposal. Nix said she hopes everyone will see the bigger picture. She said at one percent Lakota was out about $27,000, which Nix said is a drop in the bucket for the largest school district in the county.
“When we did one percent we had some grumbling (from other taxing bodies),” Nix said. “The other counties have been telling me they did not get the push back…, because the schools understood that the while they would be receiving less, the money would be going to eliminate blight and in the long run that should improve collections over time.”
The land bank was formed in 2012 and two years ago Butler County commissioners agreed to siphon one percent of DTAC funds to bolster the land bank, help raise the required matching funds and open up services for the entire county. For the first two years only the cities of Hamilton and Middletown benefited from state and federal programs designed to beat back blight. The cities have received $5.6 million in Moving Ohio Forward funding and have spent $1.3 million in Hardest Hit Fund dollars and have been reimbursed $469,866 in HHF so far.
The county found out in July another $1.8 million is on the way in HHF monies and just learned an additional $540,772 is also coming from the federal program and will be for targeted neighborhoods in the two big cities and Fairfield Twp.
Including Hamilton and Middletown, there are now 13 member communities in the land bank. Fairfield, Hanover, Lemon, Liberty, Oxford and Madison, Morgan, Ross, St. Clair and Wayne townships and the city of Trenton have all joined the land bank.
McNamara said it is not just about having the funds to help all land banks members but as the economy improved, DTAC funds have diminished because more people are paying their taxes on time. DTAC revenues just for the treasurer’s office — the treasurer and prosecutor split five percent of DTAC proceeds — show there was $1 million in the bank in 2009, revenues were at a high of $462,482 in 2011 and dropped to $393,886 last year.
“When you have fewer delinquencies out there, there is less of a pot, it’s almost like our success can impact our bottom line,” he said. “It’s a good correlation to have, you don’t want to have a lot of delinquency out there. There are many instances where we will file on a property and a property owner who has previously been unresponsive is able to redeem their property.”
A study the land bank initiated shows investing in blight eradication is working. The study shows it has had a positive influence on property values in Hamilton and foreclosures in Middletown.
Last fall, McNamara sought the help of Miami University students in the Center for Analytics & Data Science, to try to determine whether bringing down blight is achieving the goal of stabilizing neighborhoods.
The students found property values of homes within a 500-foot radius of a downed eyesore increased 29.65 percent in Hamilton but a “statistically insignificant” amount in Middletown.
Meanwhile, banishing blight in Middletown had a positive effect on foreclosures but the results were not true for Hamilton.
“Interestingly, in Middletown, there is a strong association between blight removal and foreclosures,” the students wrote. “Such that proximity to a demolished property is associated with a significant reduction in the likelihood of foreclosure when comparing similar properties.”
In Hamilton approximately 45 to 50 properties where blight was banished have been re-purposed. The city demolished a blighted property on Hanover Street adjacent to St. Joseph Catholic Church so the church could add more parking, they banished a brothel/drug house that was next to a playground and a Habitat for Humanity house rose up in the 300 block of 10th Street.
Dudley said they have put re-purposing on hold while they evaluate “strategic uses” for all of the properties.
Middletown City Manager Doug Adkins said they are also in the process of studying their housing stock and that report should be out in early 2017.
Adkins chose not to comment on the current DTAC proposal, but when the subject was broached a year ago, he urged patience.
“I think there is an advantage to running where we’re at just for the short term and showing some more successes just at the one percent,” Adkins said. “The time I think to make that ask is when the one percent is tapped, and we still have more need and requests we can’t fulfill.”
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