On Tuesday night, during a special Middletown City Council meeting, council voted 4-0 to support the county land bank’s application of a Moving Ohio Forward Grant from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
The County Land Reutilization Corp., which is the still-forming county land bank, is applying for the $2.7 million state grant, and Middletown and Hamilton are potential beneficiaries of the grant, equally splitting the grant and the collective $2.2 million required match.
Last week, council sought to pass a resolution as emergency legislation showing interest in the grant. A six-vote super majority was needed since it was emergency legislation, but council voted 5-1, with Councilman Josh Laubach dissenting. Vice Mayor Dan Picard was out of town.
On Tuesday, with three council members — Anita Scott Jones, A.J. Smith and Laubach — unable to attend the meeting, there was little discussion and the vote took less than 15 minutes.
If the city is able to match the $1.1 million in grants, Community Revitalization Director Doug Adkins said 300 vacant and abandoned homes — about 10 percent of its such properties — would be demolished by Dec. 31, 2013.
He said the city is in the process of identifying possible dilapidated homes to be leveled.
Mayor Larry Mulligan said the city will seek the “worse of the worst,” and hopes following the demolition of the homes, property values in those neighborhoods will increase.
During the meeting, Dan Picard, who missed last week’s meeting, questioned how the city was going to match the grant. Landen told him the city would move the necessary money out of the city’s general fund, adjusting the budget. He called it “a pretty simple process,” then said the move was “perfectly above board.”
The Moving Ohio Forward Grant is money that was part of a federal settlement with multiple mortgage providers. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office was given the state’s portion of the multibillion-dollar settlement and set aside $75 million for the grant program designed to demolish dilapidated and abandoned homes.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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