The City of Perry has an aggressive 10-year tax abatement plan, and it’s already been utilized by many residents.

At their most recent meeting, the Perry City Council approved several applications for the program from the last year, including four new houses. City Administrator Sven Peterson says offering five years of no property taxes followed by five of prorated taxes could have put some cities on edge, but the aggressive approach has proved fruitful so far for Perry. “Tax abatement in different communities can be kind of a hot topic. But in Perry, I really think that it’s going to be the right thing for us. These are the first new houses built since about 2010 or 2011. So the fact that people are actually building homes really attests to the fact that this is something that works for our community.”

In addition to the new houses, Peterson says they’ve also had an influx this year of people making improvements to their homes, which also qualifies for tax abatement. The City received a large amount of abatement applications over the last year, and could see more before the deadline. Peterson adds, “And that’s showing that reinvestment in those homes by those homeowners, that they could have just bought the property or they could have owned the property for 20 years and decided to do something. But either way, that’s people reinvesting in that housing stock that we already have, and to me that’s just as important as building new homes and having brand new buildings going up.”

Anyone still wanting to take advantage of the Perry tax abatement program for 2017 can fill out an application at City Hall. The deadline to submit an application is February 1, 2018.