There would have been 87 foreclosed parcels going to public auction Aug. 2 except the City of Dowagiac bought seven of them for $185,000 in back taxes.

That’s up from 44 the previous year.

That property is occupied by the former Inverness Castings Group (ICG) factory into which Premier Die-Cast is expanding, bringing new jobs to the community.

Cass County Treasurer Linda Irwin was instrumental in the deal happening through the Cass County Land Bank.

P.A. 258 of 2003 provided for creation of land bank authorities to assist governmental entities in the assembly and clearance of title to property; to promote economic growth; and to authorize the acquisition, maintenance and disposal of interests in real and personal property.

Cass County Land Bank Authority was created in September 2008 by the Board of Commissioners through an intergovernmental agreement with the Michigan Land Bank Fast Track Authority and Irwin.

By state statute, the county treasurer chairs the five-member Land Bank Authority board of directors. Four are appointed by the Board of Commissioners and include Commissioner Robert Ziliak of Milton Township as vice chairman, Wayne Township Clerk Kurt Reich as secretary and at-large member; program chairman City Clerk Jim Snow’s daughter, Commissioner Cathy Goodenough of Marcellus; and Harry Shaffer, representing the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority.

Reich replaced Sandy Gower, county grants and projects manager, when she left Cass County, and Shaffer succeeded Dan Wyant when he joined Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration in Lansing.

Commissioners allocated $100,000 to the Land Bank Authority for seed money, but it becomes self-funding over time as property it owns sells.

The Land Bank purchased three properties in 2009 – one in the Village of Cassopolis and two in the City of Dowagiac.

In 2010, the Land Bank purchased two properties, one in Dowagiac and another in Ontwa Township.

Irwin, who formerly worked for attorney and Rotarian John Magyar, Snow said in his introduction to Dowagiac Rotary Club Thursday noon at Elks Lodge 889, was appointed treasurer in 2000, was elected in 2004 and re-elected to a second four-year term in 2008.

“It was formed to have another tool in our toolbox for rehab and redevelopment in the county,” she said. “We had a Brownfield Authority, which can clean up properties and capture taxes, environmental things.

“In the foreclosure process, if you don’t pay your taxes they go delinquent,” Irwin explained. “They come back to me. The following year they go to forfeiture. The year after that they’re foreclosed. At the point they’re foreclosed, we send a list of all the properties to the state, which has the first right of refusal. The state can purchase those properties, but it must pay market value for them, or two times the assessed value. They have never purchased anything from Cass County. When they send back their refusal, the list goes to all the local units – the city, the townships – and they get their bite of the apple, if they want anything from that list. Then the county has a bite of that apple. That’s how the Land Bank acquires. The Land Bank cannot buy, but the county can and deed it into the Land Bank.

The first year, the Land Bank’s seed money paid to tear down two blighted houses in Dowagiac at 106 Halstead, which was primarily occupied by cats and raccoons; and 503 N. Front St., which became the site of a new Habitat for Humanity home “once we demolished the house and cleaned the lot, we donated that to Habitat to put that back on the tax roll. That is always the goal – to get the property clean and back on the tax roll,” Irwin said.

Halstead remains an empty lot, but Irwin has tried for two years to interest churches in establishing a community garden there, even putting water at the parcel by agreement with the city.

“I contacted this new collaborative, ACTION, and they might be able to take it on next year,” she said. “It’s always for sale, but nobody’s picked it up.”

“The Land Bank didn’t buy any this year,” Irwin said, “because our board was fractured” by the turnover of two members. “The public auction Aug. 2 is a minimum bid auction and they’re sold to the highest bidder. The minimum bid is the back taxes, the cost of the title work and what it took to prepare it to go to sale and make the delinquent tax fund whole. As of this morning we have 80 parcels left because Dowagiac purchased seven of them, ICG.

“I’ve been working with (City Manager) Kevin Anderson on this for months. Originally, they were going to pay the taxes and get it before it was foreclosed, but I advised them that wouldn’t be good because when I foreclose on a property, all liens are canceled except IRS liens, which get another 90 days. The city exercised its right to purchase the property clear of liens from me. We don’t have the check yet, but it’s coming. We’ve got a letter. That’s going to be wonderful because (Premier) is going to bring about 100 jobs. That’s a good use. We could have put that into the Land Bank, but that’s risky for us because it had to be purchased for the minimum bid of $185,000. We don’t have that much money, so we would have had to borrow, and I didn’t get into this job to be a real estate agent,” Irwin said.

“Last year we purchased a parcel and put it into the Land Bank and is holding it for Habitat. If they don’t rehab that house, we’ll sell it. We also bought a pole barn last year in a nice subdivision down in Edwardsburg. The bank paid the taxes on the house, but didn’t on the contiguous one acre with the pole barn. Rather than sell that to someone who might put in a motorcycle repair shop or a lawn-mowing business, we held it, paying about $3,000 in back taxes.

“This summer a young couple bought the house and I sold them the pole barn for $12,000, which will do about three demos. Money in the Land Bank does not go into the county general fund. We keep that money to rehab, maintain or demo property to get it back on the tax roll. Right now we are holding one parcel in Dowagiac for Habitat. We have a parcel with a billboard on it that we get $900 rent every year.”

“You can donate property to the Land Bank,” she added, “but we don’t take garbage.”

The Land Bank can also be a tool to assemble parcels for a larger project, Irwin indicated. “When the Land Bank holds them, they’re not taxed. I’ve not gotten into that. The reason I got into this was to clean blighted properties and side lots. A lot of times there are strips next to your house that someone doesn’t maintain. A speculator might have bought it on eBay because it says Twin Lakes and they think it’s lakefront property. When they don’t pay taxes on it for three years, it cycles. I write letters to all the neighbors and if one of them buys it, it gets back on the tax roll. It’s a tool in the toolbox like a Brownfield Authority to help businesses and neighborhoods get property cleaned up.”

While Berrien County has one, many smaller counties, including Van Buren and St. Joseph, do not.

Larger counties, such as Ingham (Lansing) and Genesee (Flint) “take on huge amounts of property,” Irwin said. “They have Realtors involved and whole Land Bank staffs. Saginaw has a huge blight problem to clean up. That doesn’t apply here, in my opinion. Berrien got a huge grant of several million dollars to clean up blight.”

Two years ago at auction she sold a “beautiful” $200,000 home for $108,000, but that’s rare because a bank usually picks it up to protect its interest.

Preview the Aug. 2 sale at www.tax-sale.info or by linking through the county Web site, casscountymi.org and the treasurer’s section.

“Hopefully, we’ll make enough to make the delinquent tax sale whole and we won’t have to charge back to local units,” Irwin said.

“I’ve never had to before, but I warn every year that this could be the year.”