WHO knew??? Cuyahoga Corruption

Submitted by lmcshane on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 08:31.

Victims of Plymouth Park: Contact Attorney James McEldrew, III, at ( 215) 545-8800 or 123 S. Broad Street, Suite 1920, Philadephia, PA 19109 email

jim [at] mceldrewlaw [dot] com">jim [at] mceldrewlaw [dot] com

www.mceldrewlaw.com

Accelerated code enforcement

Submitted by lmcshane on Sat, 06/09/2012 - 04:16.

Thank you for posting the above information on a class action suit against Plymouth Park. I have directed some victims to the attorney. It will be interesting to see an outcome.

I am not encouraged by this article:
http://www.communityprogress.net/filebin/pdf/Kermit_Lind_Code_Enforcement_Paper.pdf

There are too many folks in NEO who will NOT question the history, motivation and strategy of the "land bank" model--mainly because they have benefitted in terms of an appointed job as part of the system (see Housing Court, Cleveland City Council, Community Development Corps, Cuyahoga County).

It's profiteering camouflaged as urban renewal.

Low, low prices on all real estate with opportunities to have the public pick up the tag on demolitions. It's just another "investment" opportunity. And, an opportunity for sick outfits like Safeguard.

Land Bank is money laundering for the mess left by Plymouth Park and tax liens sales authorized by County Treasurer which stopped in 2008, because Plymouth Park was not paying their taxes. Rokakis regrouped his scheme and used the "land bank" to pick up these delinquent liens, where the liens and title to these properties can be sanitized with some wite out. Frangos who leads up "Land Bank" was at Boards of Revision before the promotion...here's a description of how land bank lots work for developers.

Dianna Hill's explanation deserves reposting:

Kickbacks for Developers....
Submitted by ANGELnWard14 on December 15, 2010 - 1:38am.

Kickbacks are all legalized with the right connections:

1) Remember, even though they bought them for $1.00...they were able to give an EQUITABLE VALUE to these properties that empowered them to use them as a leverage in the big scheme of capital investments towards leveraging dollar for dollar grants...Thus if they said the property was valued at $50,000 as a buildable vacant lot...then they got credit for that value and that much in funding towards their building project along with HOPE grant subsidies...it's an extraordinary web of money laundering for high end development! Below is a 1996 HUD outline of some of the original funding outlines!

a) Brownfield Development Funding (See the properties of Battery Park as an example).

b) 15 year tax abatements

c) Tax Credits for new development that is supposed to be low-moderate income housing...

d) HUD Funding for administration costs:

1) Empowerment Zone funds (East side of Cleveland)

2) Enterprise Zone Funds

3) Supplemental Empowerment Zone Funds

4) Home Ownership Zone funding collaboratives

Who invited Plymouth Park???? Let's look to Youngstown for some answers:

See: http://smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/youngstown-program-brief.pdf

From:

The sale of tax liens to private debt collectors
involves important policy tradeoffs for city and county officials to carefully consider. In
the short term, tax lien sales can provide local governments with much-needed revenue,
but in the long term it can delay the revitalization of vacant properties and make it more
complex and burdensome by taking away local control over the property and placing it in
the hands of out-of-state private tax lien purchasers; such investors typically do not live
in the city and have no interest in neighborhood well-being.

Prior to 2004, the City of Youngstown and Mahoning County independently exercised
their tax collection authority by foreclosing on tax-delinquent properties. Recognizing
that the high number of such properties within the county and for a large part of the city
represented both a drain on the system and a potential source of revenue, the Mahoning
County Treasurer petitioned the State of Ohio for the right to bundle and sell tax liens
through a negotiated sale. The county received permission and, in 2004, bundled and sold
12,000 liens to American Tax Funding Services (ATFS), extinguishing $38 million in
debt. The contract with ATFS includes reselling any new liens in the previously
purchased bundle for a period of five years, with each lien remaining on the properties for
six years unless paid or foreclosed on by the lien holder.15 The sale and resale of tax liens
has created a very complex process.

And, of course, in Cuyahoga County, where the sale of tax liens was "pioneered" in 1998 by he-who-shall-not-be-mentioned-- the very complex process means administration and sale of tax liens avoided the big fish tax scofflaws $$ like Gus Frangos:
http://realneo.us/content/gus-frangos-president-and-general-counsel-cuyahoga-county-land-reutilization-corp-are-you-no

Nothing fishy there!