When the leaves drop, the Brown County Redevelopment Commission wants to be ready to load up and go for a drive with a specific purpose.
Members are planning to survey all the land parcels they can see from public roads, recording certain details about them in a cellphone-based app.
The RDC discussed this concept at length during several public meetings in 2019. The idea behind it is twofold: To take stock of the existing housing in Brown County and see if any buildings that aren’t being lived in could be made into something livable, and to extend aid to anyone who isn’t able to maintain their property on their own and would like some help, said RDC President Justin Schwenk.
Housing availability has long been mentioned as a challenge in Brown County, so the RDC decided months ago that this could be an area when they could be of service.
But first, they need to get their arms around the problem — if there actually is one.
“What we are working on with this land survey is to give us an idea, a very data-driven idea, of where the places are in our county that is where our money and time would be best spent,” Schwenk explained.
“Are there places that lend themselves better to redevelopment than others? Or are we on a wild goose chase and there’s not as much residential redevelopment that needs to be done? Or do we actually have a real problem, not just an anecdotal one? And if so, where are those?”
Last month, the RDC decided to contract with Loveland Technologies to use its LandGrid software for the survey. A year’s service will cost $10,000.
When the RDC signs a contract, members want to be ready to go on the survey then so as not to spend any more taxpayer money than they have to, Schwenk said.
So, to aid in the development of the survey and the public’s understanding of the project, he’d like to see people attend the RDC’s next meeting on Thursday, Sept. 24. Meetings lately have been conducted virtually on Zoom at 6 p.m.
The RDC would like to get started on developing the survey questions then.
Some things the survey project will not do are to trespass on anyone’s private property or to “make a judgment call on how clean your property is or try to get people to fit a particular stereotypical, ‘This is what a good house looks like,’” Schwenk said. “That’s not the purpose in the slightest.
“Now, if there are homes that look like routine maintenance is a struggle, and we reach out to folks and say, ‘Hey, we happen to have some people here who are willing to bring a Dumpster and help you have a day where you tell us what to throw out,’ then that is a definite benefit, but there’s no way to make that an expectation. That would be entirely on the residents’ desire to have that happen,” he said.
“And that is a big piece of it: Making sure that we build some trust with the community, that we’re not out here to harrass them or to try to force them into a particular model of living. The No. 1 purpose is simply to evaluate the number and location of properties that are not being utilized in a way that could potentially be productive.”
For instance, it makes more sense to build a new home where a home once was instead of clearing new ground and running new infrastructure to it.
“We’re simply doing a pass-by survey that tells us … is somebody living there or not? … Is this a primary residence or is this not a primary residence? And then, the level of the condition of the house,” he said.
The county RDC and county commissioners also have been working out a data-sharing agreement whereby Loveland could have access to county data such as tax records for properties.
That data, along with the on-the-ground survey data collected this fall and winter, could be plugged into Loveland’s programs to show a bigger-picture story about property in Brown County, said RDC member Jim Schultz at the July meeting.
“Property tax is going to be one of those things we’re going to look at,” Schultz said. “It benefits the county to have a holistic look at this. … There have been counties that have done stuff like this and found properties that have been off the rolls and found those disparities.”
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Read documents from recent Brown County Redevelopment Commission meetings, including the land survey agreement with Loveland Technologies, through the Brown County Redevelopment Commission’s Facebook page. A link is posted there to the RDC’s Google Drive.
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