On April 7, 2026, the Common Council's committee held a meeting to receive the annual report from the Greater Syracuse Land Bank, as required by state law. Executive Director Caitlin Wright and Board Chairman Pat Hogan presented the report covering acquisitions, sales, finances, and future projects. Council members asked questions and discussed ongoing challenges.
Hello, are you? I just called my mother and said, Spend your day in prayer today. It is eleven o'clock. We will get this committee meeting started. I'll call to order the committee meeting for the annual report of the land bank. And our in our past council member slash colleague, Mr. Pat Hogan. Nice to have you back. Thank you for having us. For the record, for folks watching at home. I'm Caitlin Wright. I'm the executive director of the Greater Syracuse Land Bank. And Pat Hogan here is the chairman of our board. Looks like Daniel Stazon, who's on our staff, is also here, and I don't see any of our other board members. But thank you for convening this meeting. We appreciate the opportunity to brief the council. State law requires that land banks brief the foreclosing governmental units that created them at least once a year. So we report once a year to the common council and to the county legislature to keep you informed of what we're doing. We are supposed to be reporting on projects undertaken by the land bank during the past year, the monies expended by the land bank, and the administrative activities of the land bank. So I did send out the report in advance. If anybody has specific questions they want to throw at us, feel free to jump in at any time. But if not, I can just start walking us through the report. Yeah, if I just walk through it. Okay. The land bank acquired 133 properties last year. 112 of those were city tax foreclosures. We would very much like to see the speed of foreclosures increase because as you know, we're trying to catch up with a backlog of seizable properties in the city. Last I checked last week, there were about 1900 season properties, and that was before every April 6th new properties become seizable. I don't know what that's running like today, but years ago when we first started this, there were about 800 that would become seizable every April 6th. So I would guess that we're you know well over 2,000 as of today. Um in here, I kind of run through some of the changes that have been made in the tax foreclosure process. As you know, the city had to revise their local tax foreclosure law in 2024. Um as part of that, we've been hired as the city's agent to deal with surplus proceeds claims that are made. Um so in the back of this packet, I have a little bit of information for you on that. To date, 24 properties have submitted claims prior to foreclosure. What we are contracted to do then is to get the property appraised as soon as we take title and have access to it, so the appraiser can get inside. And the city law department provides us with a breakdown of how much they owed the city at the time of foreclosure. And so if the appraisal comes back lower than what they owed, then there is no surplus, and we send them a letter with a copy of the appraisal and a copy of the city bill explaining that there is no surplus to be had. Um if the appraisal comes back higher than what they owed, then there is surplus, and we provide all that documentation to Judge Paris, and he conducts uh surplus money proceeding. He'll inform the former owner of record and any claimants that there is surplus available, hold a hearing, and then distribute it based on lien position. So if there was a mortgage holder, they would get made whole first, and any subsequent lien holders, and then if there's anything left over at the end, that would go back to the former owner. So of the 24 claims we've had so far, about half of those have had no surplus, and the other half have had surplus, um, a total of just under 300,000. I was saying we just hit that mark. Just hit it, right? I know, but I was really surprised when I totaled it. Uh just about what you budget for surplus proceedings in any given year. All right. So being that we did like just come under, um, do you foresee that we would need to up that or is it okay where it is right now? Um I believe that that is what is in your the proposed budget for the coming year. It's probably a safe bet.