Bainbridge Trustees Wrestle with Land Bank Program

May 14, 2015 by Diane Ryder

Bainbridge Township officials want to get out of the real estate business, but first they need to find buyers for 77 tiny parcels in a land bank program in Chagrin Falls Park.

The complicated state land bank program gave the township parcels of foreclosed land, mostly 0.06 acres each, that had failed to sell at sheriff’s sales, trustees said May 11. The hitch is they have to be sold within 15 years and used for community improvement.

The last one was added to the land bank in 2006, about the time the program became inactive, trustees said. A few of the scattered parcels were sold in the early years, but none recently.

The parcels have a market value of $100 and up, according to county records.

The Geauga County Auditor’s Office told trustees if the parcels are not sold within 15 years, the township would be responsible for back taxes on the properties.

For the last several months, trustees have debated what to do with the inactive program and how to dispose of the parcels. To avoid taxes, nine specific lots have to be sold by the end of the year or the township will be taxed on them. Others will need to be sold by 2017 and later.

Trustees would like to sell all of the parcels to the Chagrin Falls Park Community Center, which Portage County-based Northeast Ohio Family and Community Services owns. The center’s governing board, the Community Development Corporation, is no longer active, although the center is still open, Trustee Jeff Markley said Monday.

Otherwise, Markley said Habitat for Humanity might buy all of them for future projects, since the nonprofit recently expressed interest in buying eight of the lots.

“The overarching issue is our land bank philosophy,” Trustee Lorrie Sass Benza said. “If it’s in our philosophical future to continue the land bank, we will need a management system in place. If we decide the purpose of the program is passed, we need to decide how to wind it down and discontinue it.”

Options include putting one trustee in charge of managing the program or dismantling it, hiring an outside consultant as manager or forming a committee of township employees to run it and make recommendations for the future.

Benza said Fiscal Officer Janice Sugarman, Zoning Inspector Karen Endres and Service Director Jim Stanek could work as a committee to sell the nine parcels by the end of the year, make recommendations to trustees about whether or not to continue the program, and to dispose of the remaining properties.

“I’m in favor of focusing on selling the nine parcels (first),” Markley said.

Sugarman said she would be willing to serve on the committee, but the process could take time away from her other duties.

“I think there’s a lot of work involved and a lot of follow up,” Sugarman said. “I think it’s going to be an extremely time consuming process.”

Benza said the properties might be useful to the township for expanding roadways.

“We’d need a much bigger management component for that,” she said, and Markley agreed.

“We’ve been using the land bank as a tool for community improvement. It would be nice if the snowplows would be able to turn around in there and not have to back up, or if the roads didn’t just end and people dump trash there.”

Resident Ted Seliga recommended the township concentrate on disposing of the remaining ones.

“The issue is, since 2006, there has been no active management, period, end of story. It should have been managed all along, but it wasn’t. In my opinion, we’re done. Dissolve the damn thing,” he said.

Markley called for a plan.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re not going to talk about this again until we have some kind of strategy,” he said. “What’s the next step?”

Benza said the township should ask for volunteers from its civic groups to serve on a land bank committee.

“Get rid of the bank and take it from there,” resident Gil Myers said.

Resident Henri Pruess asked why the Chagrin Falls Park community had not shown any interest in the issue.

Benza said the Community Develop-ment Corporation and the homeowners’ association are inactive or dissolved.

“Then sell the damn things off,” Pruess said.

Trustees took no formal action.