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The Jefferson County Land Bank has been serving the area for nearly 10 years, but not everyone understands exactly what it does.
"Land banks are not a part of local government. A lot of people think they are going to call the county commissioners and complain that they want the land bank to take care of this or that," Ray Agresta, chairman of the land bank's board of directors, explained to members of the Steubenville Rotary Club during their Nov. 15 meeting.
"Land banks are quasi-government agencies that are governed by a board of directors that is created by statute," he continued while speaking at the JeffCo Event Center.
"That requires the county treasurer, two county commissioners, an appointee of the largest municipality in the county and a person who is chosen at the discretion of the land bank to be on the board," he added.
Agresta, who also serves as Jefferson County's treasurer, is joined on the board by Commissioners Dave Maple and Tony Morelli; Chris Petrossi, who is the director of Steubenville's planning and zoning commission; and Evan Scurti, who is the at large member.
What that board does is work to make the county a better place to live in by taking ownership of properties and managing them until redevelopment can begin.
"The primary purpose is to remove slums and blighted property from the community, then restore unproductive property back into the community and put it back onto the tax rolls," he explained.
It's a concept that goes back more than 100 years, he added. Federal land banks, Agresta said, were started in 1916 under President Woodrow Wilson as a way of extending credit to farmers and ranchers.
"Then the 1960s came along, and urban planners were using land banks as a tool to help combat urban sprawl in large metropolitan areas," Agresta said. "In the 1970s, we saw a number of passive land banks in the state of Ohio. A passive land bank, as the name indicates, was only designed to acquire property and hold onto it for future use. They really didn't have any intention of doing anything more than that."
Things changed dramatically in December 2008, Agresta added, when Ohio Senate Bill 353 was signed into law. That legislation, which was really pushed by a couple of attorneys from Cleveland, Jim Rokakis and Gus Frangos, allowed for the creation of county land utilization corporations.
Rokakis, who served as the Cuyahoga County treasurer, and Frangos were so passionate about the potential of land banks that they co-authored a book -- "The Land Bank Revolution: Fighting the Foreclosure Crisis and Taking Back Ohio's Communities." And, Rokakis was featured in a Dec. 18, 2011, report on "60 Minutes" titled "There Goes the Neighborhood," where he spoke with CBS correspondent Scott Pelley about the growing blight in the Cleveland area.
By 2009, Agresta explained, the Cuyahoga County Land Utilization Land Bank had been formed, and by the end of that year there were land banks in Franklin, Lucas, Mahoning, Trumble, Hamilton and Montgomery counties. Today, with population restrictions no longer in effect, 66 of Ohio's 88 counties have land banks, Agresta said.
That includes Jefferson, where the land bank was formed after Rokakis, a friend of Agresta's family, said there were millions of dollars in federal funds coming to fight blight in Ohio -- money that would be directed through land banks. That led to the formation of the Jefferson County Land Utilization Corp. in 2014.
Land banks, Agresta said, can acquire property that is tax delinquent or has been foreclosed on. Property also can be donated.
"If you have some property that you want to donate to the land bank, your taxes need to be current. We're not going to take somebody's burden or debt to society away." Agresta said.
An example of donated property, Agresta said, sits across from the Jefferson County Tower on Market Street. The owners of the buildings that stood there were current on their taxes, but found out that repairing the buildings would cost them more than they were worth, so they contacted the land bank, which got in touch with the commissioners, and the result will be a parking lot and green space that will make a difference in how that part of the city looks.
Agresta credited Tabatha Glover of the land bank staff with coming up with the idea.
"That corner looks awesome," he said.
Numbers from around the state prove the program is working, Agresta said. Since 2009, he explained, land banks have demolished 33,000 properties, rehabilitated 5,000 properties and and, collectively, have put $1 billion back into their communities.
In Jefferson County, 263 structures have been demolished at a cost of $5,098,000 that taxpayers have not had to pay for.
Ohio's and utilization corporations -- land banks -- have come a long way since 2008. That includes the work of the land bank in Jefferson County, which continues to work to clean up dilapidated and abandoned properties in our region.
(Gallabrese, a resident of Steubenville, is executive editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. He is a member of the Steubenville Rotary Club.)