Mayors + Council

Resources for Legislative Leaders

Collecting Delinquent Taxes

Many municipal leaders are not aware of The Jones Act, which allows your Tax Collector, with the consent of the Council, to sell delinquent taxes that have been struck off to the municipal account. To learn more, please see Property Tax Liens & Better Municipal Finance

Abandoned Properties

The Abandoned Property Rehabilitation Act is a relatively new law that gives your code enforcement people new options. Click here to learn more about the Abandoned Properties Act

The Jones Act

The Jones Act is a section of New Jersey's Tax Sale Law giving municipalities a way to dispose of municipally-held tax sale certificates, even on dilapidated or contaminated properties. For more information, please visit this page on our web site.

Rehabilitation versus New Construction

To learn the advantages of renovating existing properties, as opposed to tearing them down and building new, please see Advantages of Renovations versus New Construction. We also offer this brochure to provides an overview of how selling to Cherokee create affordable hous- ing, and stronger communities.

Boarded Up Buildings

To learn more about how Board-Ups negatively impact entire communities, not just the immediate owners and neighbors, please see Renovating Board-Ups.

The Mayor's Resource Guide to Vacant and Abandoned Properties is a report (12 pages, 284k PDF) by the National Housing Institute for the United States Conference of Mayors. It explores strategies to restore the abandoned properties in your community to productive use. It focuses on the pivotal role a Mayor can play in reducing abandoned properties.

Smart Codes in your Community: A Guide to Building Rehabilitation Codes. (Published by HUD in 2001), provides a broad overview of the general regulatory environment governing the use and reuse of existing buildings, and provides examples of state and local efforts to reduce regulatory complexity to help spur reinvestment in the existing building infrastructure.

Smart Growth is a set of concepts that boils down to this: reduce outward sprawl, and concentrate growth and redevelopment in existing areas, increasing density and utilization. Cherokee's renovation of existing properties, usually in urban areas, is in concert with this Smart Growth strategy and master plan. Rutgers University Center for Urban Policy Research prepared a studyentitled Infill Development Standards & Policy Guide (466 page PDF download).

Community Resources

There are many other economic and community development resources on this web site, including our web page entitled Resources for Local Community Development Organizations

More About Cherokee

Are you at this web site to learn more about Cherokee? Perhaps you heard that we own properties in your community, or hold tax liens or mortgages, and you're curious who we are. We welcome your interest. We believe the more familiar you are with who we are and what we do , the more comfortable you'll be. So to read summaries of who we are and what we do, and what your peers are saying about us, please click here . You can also download our brochures to share with others.