Ziance Quoted in Cleveland Plain Dealer Story Regarding Potential New Community Authority in Cleveland

Scott Ziance, a partner in the Vorys Columbus office and a member of the tax group, was quoted in a Cleveland Plain Dealer story titled “Flats East Bank Dining, Shopping, Lodging Could Cost you a Few Extra Bucks. Here's Why.”  According to the story, the Cleveland City Council is considering a the creation of a new community authority.  New community authorities, which are governed by public-private boards, have been used in other parts of Ohio but not in Cleveland.

The story states:

“New community authorities are complex, somewhat arcane tools unfamiliar to most people in Northeast Ohio.

In the most basic terms, such authorities let communities and developers create new revenue streams across a project site and then capture that money to pay for or care for the project. Some experts compare them to homeowners' associations, in which residents pay fees to maintain shared spaces; or even special improvement districts, such as the downtown Cleveland district where property owners pay fees for additional cleaning services, safety crews and marketing.

‘No matter how you slice and dice it, it's a tool for generating revenues for improvements,’ said Scott Ziance, a partner at the Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease law firm in Columbus. ‘From my perspective, it's a valuable tool in the toolkit, but it should only be used by trained professionals. It's complicated. It's like my father-in-law's garage. I'm not going to touch half the tools in there, because I don't know what to do with them.’”

To read the entire story, visit the Cleveland Plain Dealer website.