Land bank one step closer
POTTSTOWN » The borough is one step closer to establishing its own land bank as the result of a 6-1 vote at the Oct. 10 council meeting.
Specifically, council voted to advertise and ordinance that would create a land bank for the borough. A vote to adopt the ordinance could come as early as next month’s meeting.
Councilman Dennis Arms cast the sole “no” vote.
It was back in January that Winifred Branton, one of Pennsylvania’s foremost experts on land banking, made a presentation to borough council on the subject.
Since then, a small committee has been working through the logistics, issues and obstacles to creating one here.
Land banks are allowed under a state law adopted in 2012. They have very specific powers to get control of key blighted properties, but cannot do so through eminent domain, Branton reminded council.
Their primary function is to attempt to connect blighted properties with developers willing to rehabilitate or redevelop them along with the plans and goals of the municipality.
“A land bank takes properties that can’t move on open market and removes obstacles to making them productive again,” said Branton. “A land bank won’t solve all your problems. It is a tool like anything else.”
Pottstown has no shortage of candidates for rehabilitation.
As of Oct. 3, the Blighted Property Review Committee had identified 65 blighted properties. As such, they can be taken by the Montgomery County Redevelopment Authority, but a lack of funds at that organizations means most of those properties sit and continue to deteriorate, said Branton.
And as of Oct. 3, 14 more parcels lay dormant in the Montgomery County Tax Claim Bureau Repository, according to information Branton presented to council.
A land bank can negotiate sales and avoid auctions and get priority at judicial sale, and also get quiet title to properties, said Branton.
But without a lot of funds, particularly in the beginning, a land bank would typically only do this when a buyer has been identified and thus avoid the costs of holding onto a property for a long period of time, she explained.
Funds to operate a land bank can be generated by providing them with up to 50 percent of the tax revenue for five years of properties which it returns to the tax rolls, provided the other taxing bodies agree, said Branton.
Under the proposed ordinance, the land bank would be overseen by a five-member board whose members would be appointed by borough council and who would set up the parameters, policies and goals for the organization.
Branton said typically, land banks are operated by existing staff, and said the Blighted Property Review Committee could even be stand-ins for the first board members until council had appointed members.
The land bank’s primary goal would be to create more owner-occupied market-rate housing, under the proposed ordinance, Branton said.
Other goals would include eliminating blight, stabilizing neighborhoods, facilitate private investment and assemble large parcels for redevelopment.
Once formed — which will require the adoption of the ordinance and agreement from the other taxing bodies Montgomery County and the Pottstown School District — the bank should start small, maybe no more than five transactions in its first year, Branton advised.
The bank should also start by working to stabilize areas that have just started to decline first, then move on to worse neighborhoods, according to Assistant Borough Manager Justin Keller.
If the borough succeeds in establishing a land bank, it may be one of the smallest in Pennsylvania.
Both Westmoreland County and Philadelphia County have established them, and townships with less than 10,000 population have banded together to create regional land banks, said Branton.
The idea was first introduced in Pottstown during a “Montgomery County Blight Summit” in 2015 and even back then, Branton was one of the presenters.
At that summit she said in 2013, blighted properties required $11 million in municipal services on top of $8 million to $10 million in lost tax revenue due to reduced property value.
Additionally, blight costs Pennsylvania about $8 million a year in lost economic investment and another $12 million in other costs in 2015, she said.
Conversely, while growing blight has costs, diminishing blight has benefits, economic and otherwise, said Branton.
Eliminating blight reduces crime, particularly gun-related violence, improves health and drives higher tax revenue by increasing property value by as much as 30 percent, she said.