The Frankfort City Council on Monday night approved an agreement with Grants for Grads which is designed to help graduates with an associate’s degree or higher who are choosing to live and work in Clinton County.
“The object of this is to help make Frankfort and Clinton County a better place to live, work, play and stay,” said Jacquelyn Dodyk, who along with Victoria Herring presented the Grants for Grads program to the council. “We feel you will have more demand that funding to cover the want.”
This program is for those individuals who have lived here for at least five years. There is a home buyer incentive program and a renter incentive program available.
“This is designed to encourage them to live in this county,” said Frankfort City Councilman Steve Beardsley.
The program also requires a $5,000 down payment.
“Over the next five years, they are relieved of 20 percent of that per year or a $1,000 a year,” said Beardsley. “So over that five years, essentially they get $5,000 of their down payment paid for them.”
Beardsley said this program is designed to help graduates stay and work in Frankfort and Clinton County. He talks about what happens when they leave the area.
“We lose their property taxes that they would be paying for houses in town,” said Beardsley. “We also lose their county tax that they’d be paying to the other county instead of paying to Frankfort. When we have people coming into the county, we lose an awful lot of what we could be capturing both in their contributions to the community and in taxes.”
In other news, the council approved the first reading of three separate ordinances designed to move the Code Enforcement to the Frankfort Police Department.
“We believe we can serve the citizens of Frankfort better by moving code enforcement to the police department working hand-in-hand with our police officers,” said Mayor Chris McBarnes. “We’re going to keep them visible all day in our neighborhoods and their jobs are going to clean up trash, litter in yards, junk vehicles, blighted properties — things that just really bring a neighborhood down.”
This was the final meeting of the year for the council unless a special meeting is called. The originally scheduled meeting on Monday, December 24, has been cancelled and the next scheduled meeting will be on January 14, at 7 p.m., in the council chambers at Old Stoney.