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Atchison City, County Working On Neighborhood Revitalization

By Joel Hardy

11/17/2015

(KAIR)--A new neighborhood revitalization plan was one topic of discussion between the Atchison city and county commissions during a joint meeting held Monday evening.

City Manager Trey Cocking proposed the plan, which he says is an incentive to build throughout the county in that “new residential construction, over the course of seven years, you get a 95% tax break the first couple of years, and then it declines down to 25% in year seven. On commercial, AG, industrial, you get 95% the first three years, and then it declines down to $35,000 on structures $10,000 or more. Someone builds a structure $500,000 or more, then it declines from 95% for the first four years, and down to 20% in year ten.”

Cocking says officials want to look at that program and see if there can be a zone designated in downtown Atchison, where a business would get a higher tax break for redeveloping in the area.

He adds that “it's a program that would not only work in downtown Atchison, but it is something that might work in Effingham too. That might be a place where they need some intense incentives to really help spur some redevelopment in Effingham or Lancaster, Huron, or Muscotah, so it would work in any of the five cities, but where we think it does not work is where someone is just taking a field that's green currently, a field that is used for agriculture purposes, and building on that.”

Cocking says that city staff will now plan the next step in the process, and will discuss the plan more during the next joint meeting, scheduled to take place in January.

In other business, County Commissioner Jeff Schuele proposed changes to city and county tobacco use policies, including offering smoking cessation programs to employees, incentivizing non tobacco use, and going to tobacco free facilities in both the city and county. Both commissions agreed to consider the changes during a future meeting.

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