The Vermilion County Board has approved $400-thousand dollars to establish a new Blighted Real Estate Demolition Program that will focus on property countywide. Board Chairman Steve Miller says it will help small communities address dilapidated properties…
{AUDIO: “These communities usually don’t have a lot of funds to work with on such a problem. We wanted to provide some monies to the communities throughout the county that would enable them to address some of these properties that are blighted and need to be demolished.”}
Miller says Vermilion Advantage will be handling the program in cooperation with the County Board. He explained where the money is coming from…
{AUDIO: “Its interest that has been earned on the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds which were in a total amount of $14-million dollars originally. And we’ve spent some of those monies – we have some of those monies, slightly more than a million dollars, still on hand. And over the course of the last several years this has been money that has accumulated from the ARPA funds that were on deposit in the county’s name.}
The program will be operated on a 50-50 basis with the county funds being used to pay half the cost of the demolitions and the towns paying the other half. Miller says with the amount of funds that are currently available there should be enough to remove about forty unsightly structures.
Also during the meeting, county board members approved a contract to resurface Hungry Hollow Road and another for improvements to the Higginsville bridge. The Hungry Hollow Road improvements will stretch from Henning Road east to the Danville city limits. It is a route many people drive in order to get to Kickapoo State Park or Kennekuk County Park from Danville.
