City Council hosts Ric Wasserman, discusses role of Athens County Land Bank

Athens City Council hosted Ric Wasserman, the vice chair of the Athens County Land Bank, to discuss the organization at a virtual meeting Monday night. 

Wasserman, who is also the Athens County treasurer, addressed the Council to explain the Land Bank’s role in the community. 

“Land Bank is a tool to address properties that no longer have value,” Wasserman said.

Wasserman highlighted the Land Bank’s role in areas outside Athens city, where properties can lose much more value. He stressed that while in the city there are rarely properties without value, in rural areas of the county, this is not the case.

For a property to qualify for possession by the Land Bank, it must be both tax delinquent and abandoned, meaning that it has no tenants or owner. 

“A lot like how the IRS got Al Capone, tax delinquency is how the land bank gets these properties,” Wasserman said of the Land Bank’s property possession process. 

Once a property has been turned over to the Land Bank, any taxes yet to be paid that are attached to the property can be extinguished. Under Land Bank control, a building’s ownership can also change, unlike through condemnation of a property where ownership does not change. 

The Land Bank, formally known as the Athens County Land Reutilization Corporation, was founded in 2018 to address the issue of abandoned properties throughout Athens County.