Fairbury Moves Forward With Land Bank

By Gordon HopkinsThe Fairbury City Council voted to enter into an agreement with the Village of Endicott to partner in a Municipal Land Bank (MLB), at a meeting on Tuesday, January 2, 2024. A land bank is an entity created by a municipality which generally allows for the acquisition, maintenance, development, and disposition of real property for the purpose of returning it to productive use. The Nebraska Municipal Land Bank Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 18-3401 et seq. (Act), was first passed in 2013, applicable primarily to Omaha and Lincoln, and subsequently amended in 2020, expanding application to the remaining classes of municipalities. The League of Nebraska Municipalities (LONM) has created resources for setting up land banks, including templates for formation and organization, which are provided with this memorandum for reference. Mayor Spencer Brown hopes a land bank can address both issues of much needed workforce housing and well as dilapidated and rundown properties.For any municipality other than Omaha or Lincoln, the creation of an MLB requires the cooperation of at least two municipalities through an interlocal agreement. The public policy rational for this requirement is that MLBs require significant resources to operate and maintain, which the Legislature viewed as potentially burdensome for cities of the first or second class or villages to manage on their own. Therefore, as a city of the second class, Fairbury must partner with another municipality to create and operate a MLB. The vote was five to one. The lone dissenting voice was councilperson Bradley Kuzelka, who explained his reasons for voting against the measure to FJN after the meeting,“I don’t think the city needs to be messing around with residential property. The lawyer says its not the city it’s the land bank but it’s the same thing. Also I don’t like the idea that the city could end up potentially bidding against someone at a sheriff sale to get property. I just don’t think we need it.”

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