Jessup to join Lackawanna County Land Bank to combat blight

Yahoo

26-05-2025

The Lackawanna County Land Bank will soon have its newest member.
Jessup is joining the county land bank to address abandoned properties and combat blight, Councilman Gregg Betti said Monday.
'The reason we want to join the land bank is in case there's situations where there's abandoned properties that aren't maintained — they're blighted, and they get onto the tax sale, then the borough can take them if it seems appropriate,' Betti said.
Jessup joins 15 other municipalities and nine school districts to work with the land bank, according to the county.
Established in 2015, the Lackawanna County Land Bank's mission is 'to foster economic and community development by eliminating blight and returning properties to productive use,' according to its website.
To achieve that goal, the land bank works with partnering municipalities to get properties back onto the tax rolls by gaining control of tax-delinquent, abandoned land and buildings that don't sell at upset or judicial sales, which are real estate auctions held to pay off unpaid property taxes.
It cuts through the red tape, said Ralph Pappas, Lackawanna County's business relationship manager and land bank administrator.
'When they sign that agreement, they allow the land bank to sell repository properties, or tax-delinquent properties, within their municipality,' Pappas said.
Normally, a tax-delinquent property would be put up at an upset sale through the Lackawanna County Tax Claim Bureau, and if it doesn't sell, it goes through the judicial sale process, he said. If it still doesn't sell, it goes into a repository of unsold property, where someone could buy it through the tax claim bureau, Pappas said.
However, if the municipality and its school district are members of the land bank, the property can be purchased directly through the land bank at a cheaper price, he said. The land bank's power to make preemptive bids at judicial sales is the major advantage, Pappas said, explaining the land bank is able to go into judicial sales with an option agreement in place with the tax claim bureau to purchase properties for the minimum bid price.
The land bank has sold about 390 properties since its inception, Pappas said.
Jessup was first approached by a land bank official several years ago, but the borough did not join at the time, Betti said.
Betti, who previously spearheaded a borough effort to adopt International Property Maintenance Code standards to reduce blight, said he raised the idea of joining the land bank in March, and council subsequently voted to join.
He attributed the decision in part to a condemned, vacant house on Lane Street that Jessup had petitioned the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas in October for permission to access and demolish.
If Jessup had been a land bank member, they would already have taken the land and torn down the condemned home, Betti said. Instead, it was sold at a tax sale, and now the borough has to restart the process of trying to get the building torn down, he said.
'The land bank is just another tool to deal with blighted properties and properties that haven't paid their taxes,' Betti said.
Joining the land bank involves an intergovernmental cooperation agreement involving the land bank, the county, Jessup and the Valley View School District.
When the land bank was first established, county commissioners and the land bank passed legislation allowing any municipality to join the land bank in order to avoid having to vote each time a new town joins, Pappas said.
Similarly, the Valley View School District previously passed a resolution allowing its three towns — Archbald, Blakely and Jessup — to join the land bank, but with a previous superintendent's signature on the document, it raised the question of whether the district would need to vote on anything new for Jessup to join, Pappas said.
Valley View Business Manager Corey Castellani said he spoke with the district solicitor about it, and he expects the school board to approve it during their June meeting.
Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan, who is a board member at the land bank, was an early advocate for the land bank while serving on Scranton City Council.
'The idea behind the land bank was, 'Let's get these properties into the hands of neighbors, into the hands of people who want to develop them, and make it easier for people to develop them,'' Gaughan said in a phone interview. 'It really worked well in the city of Scranton and in other communities that had joined the land bank early on, and now we're starting to see boroughs like Jessup come on board, which is really great.'
Prior to the land bank, if the city demolished a blighted home, the land would sit unused for years because neighbors weren't going to pay thousands of dollars in back taxes for land that wasn't worth it, Gaughan said.
By selling the land to neighbors more cheaply through the land bank's side lot program, the city was able to get the land back on the tax rolls and beautify neighborhoods, he said.
'Let's get these properties back on the tax rolls,' Gaughan said. 'Let's get them into people's hands within the neighborhood, who are going to improve them and help beautify the neighborhoods and bring the neighborhoods back to where they should be.'