The City of Las Cruces approved a new effort to tackle vacant properties in the city.
The council voted unanimously to approve an ordinance that creates a registry for vacant properties and charges the owners yearly fees for being on the registry. The ordinance aims to only penalize properties that have been vacant for over two years and do not have an exemption like being up for sale at a fair price and is marketed as being for sale.
The fee for having a property on the vacant list starts at $500 and moves to $2000 per year on the third year for residential and $2000 moving to $8000 per year for commercial properties. The ordinance also sets up an appeal process for owners.
Chris Faivre, the Community Development Director for the city, said that there are 424 vacant properties in the city and he hopes that this can be a way to spur redevelopment.
“The goal is very simple. Get these properties back into reuse and get them reactivated and get them redeveloped and get them contributing to the community,” Faivre said.
Faivre said that he hopes the program gets properties redeveloped before it gets to any fees. He said this is just another way to communicate with owners.
“There are a lot of properties that over the last year and a half we have been talking to owners and they just don't know what they can or cannot do. Because there hasn't been that line of communication, no one contacted them, they haven't spoken with anybody and after we talked with them, they were like ‘Oh ok we have an idea of what we can do’ so really just getting that dialogue open is going to be very helpful,” Faivre said.
In the meeting, the city also bought a piece of property across the street of City Hall for $455,000. The property is currently in disrepair but the city hopes to redevelop it although no plan for the property has been settled on.
