Staff writer
With commission chairman Dan Holub out sick, commissioners Randy Dallke and Lori Lalouette got straight to business at Monday’s meeting, including a discussion about the relevance of the neighborhood revitalization program.
“My serious thoughts are doing away with the program, period,” Dallke said. “I think (Holub) is looking into it businesswise to help business.”
The Neighborhood Revitalization Program, which provides five years of property tax rebates off a newly constructed property, is a program people have been using according to Tonya Richards.
“It seems like most people know about the program,” planning and zoning director Tonya Richards said. “People are usually receptive of it.”
While many people know of the program, there have been both positive and negative outcomes from it.
Dallke brought up a letter they had received a couple weeks back from a woman who expected her 90 percent return on the taxes and had never received it, while Richards mentioned a couple who decided on Marion County Lake over El Dorado Lake because of the difference between the five year plan Marion offers and what El Dorado offers.
Big businesses also use the program, including Container Services, according to Richards.
County appraiser Ray Cook also mentioned that counties other than Marion are now offering the program.
“It’s hard for the program to draw people to the county when others have it,” Cook said.
In other business:
- Commissioners approved a property to be taken off of the delinquent property tax sale, which is scheduled for Sept. 25. “As long as taxes would be paid,” Dallke said, “I would take it off.”
- Dallke read an announcement to the meeting attendees that Don Rosine, a previous Peabody police officer that Dallke had worked with, died early Monday morning. “I send my sympathy to the family,” Dallke said, “I will miss him lot.”