Changes to possibly streamline a county function were delayed Monday, Jan. 29, when the Shelby County Board of Commissioners delayed a final vote to change the Shelby County Land Bank into a Shelby County Real Estate Department.

The ordinance by County Commissioner Britney Thornton drew concerns from other commissioners who don’t want to approve a new role for the department, which sells tax-delinquent property, ahead of having funding in the county budget to carry out the new duties.

Property sales have been one of Thornton’s concerns since she took office in September 2022. She has also bought and attempted to buy property at the sales.

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“It doesn’t promote development and it celebrates getting properties back on the tax rolls at the lowest possible uses,” she said during Monday’s discussion.

She also said the changes should “streamline” the department in the transition.

The land bank is — and the real estate department would be — part of the public works division headed by County Public Works Director Cliff Norville.

“It’s not that I’m necessarily opposed to this ordinance. There are still a lot of ambiguities involved in the ordinance,” Norville said. “It’s changed and evolved throughout the process.”

Norville said the result is an agency that keeps the duties of the land bank and adds more duties such as marketing the land and verifying whether the property is used for what developers say it will be used for.

Norville is working up estimates on how much more that could cost. That will factor in reducing a nonrefundable fee for bidding on the parcels and another change that would return the fee to those who don’t purchase the land.

Avant questioned whether the ordinance is premature.

“If you’re going to have to prepare to restructure an entire department, were you planning to bring that during the budget season?” Avant asked. “Should there be some adjustment or baseline we are looking at before we decide to add these duties to a structurally imbalanced budget?”

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Budget deliberations begin in May for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

The real estate department proposal was delayed to Feb. 21 committee discussions.