Trending
COLUMBIANA -- The city's Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) team is recommending changes to help improve the program.
The city established the state-sanctioned CRA program five years ago with the understanding that it would be reviewed within five years.
City Manager Lance Willard said the program has been "very successful."
The program serves as an economic development tool for the city, with the city offering property tax abatements for residential and commercial/industrial projects for a specified amount of time.
Agreements for each project must be approved by city council and also the Columbiana School District in the event that a proposed agreement would affect the district's tax base.
The recommendations from the CRA team include limiting tax abatements to owner/occupied constructions for residential classifications, and providing a means to developers of non-occupied residential housing projects to participate in the commercial/industrial part of the CRA program.
Over the last two council meetings this month council approved implementing a change in which the owner of a house must live in the house to get the automatic 100 percent, 15-year tax abatement, assuming they turn in the application form as required by the ordinance.
City Manager Lance Willard said that if a house is not going to be lived in by the owner of the house, then an application will have to be submitted to the CRA negotiation committee to see what tax abatement parameters they will offer for that project prior to the start of the construction.
"This would be the same process that commercial projects go through now," he said.
Mayor Rick Noel has said he would like to thank the CRA committee for working on the review of the program.
"It was good to have us look at it again after five years. Thank you guys for your work," Noel said.