This book is a primer on the procedure to reduce crime, reduce costs of maintenance, fire and police departments in your city by removing vacant structures in a timely fashion. A by product of reducing vacant structures is the improvement of property tax collection. The Indiana lawmakers passed legislation to expedite the process of condemning and demolishing/de-constructing vacant structures in 2006. Several laws were passed in the succeeding years to enhance the initial law. The city of Marion has been recognized as a leader in the state to utilize these laws resulting from the condemning a building on the city/county square, which resulted in a ruling from the Indiana Supreme Court. Grant County Indiana, with Marion as the county seat, is ranked as the 7th best county in the USA by the US Census of 2010 in addressing/reducing the problem of vacant structures.
While the laws exist, it is a challenge for all the various departments in the city and county to extract the fraction of the laws that pertain to that department. All the pertinent laws are included as reference material and is in flowable text to allow reading on any device. Several forms are included to assist other cities in devising their forms.
Seminars have been given to other cities and we are willing to schedule more seminars. If sufficient interest exists, we will create a web-seminar. We are also contemplating a web site to allow questions and answers to issues and situations that occur in other cities.
The book is based on actual results within the City of Marion, Indiana and co-authored by the Building Inspector/Code Enforcement Officer of the city.
