Emporia, KS Vacant Building Registration (VBR) measure moves to city commission for review

Troubles with prolonged building vacancy has moved the city commission toward proposing a registry. Fines that increase incrementally over time could be applied for buildings that remain vacant for prolonged periods, while still allowing for buildings to be put on the market and renovated to avoid fines should those buildings no longer be a blight on the community; a distinction between commercial and residential buildings was suggested.

Casey Woods, executive director of Emporia Main Street, said, "What we are looking at is targeting properties that have been chronically vacant and are having an adverse effect on the community and figuring out a way that we can create a program that, one, identifies those properties, secondly, has some sort of series of steps where we can say, 'This is the chronically vacant property, we've identified it, and we are going to have a communication with the property owner and then these are the steps that we take to pass that.'"

See Also: The Emporia Gazette - City commission proposes plans for vacant buildings

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