The tax abatement program to encourage development in downtown Vicksburg is a good one, but according to one developer, she is being wrongfully penalized for cleaning up and refurbishing blighted properties.

Mary Jane Wooten, a developer and real estate agent, went before the Warren County Board of Supervisors during their work session Monday and said four properties in question are being taxed at an abnormally higher rate.

Wooten said she bought the old Charles Department Store building on Washington Street four months ago for $247,000. The only work she has done to the building is gutted the inside, but the value of the building, which she claims had been on the market for ten years, suddenly increased $113,000.

“The property taxes rose from $4,200 to $7,600,” Wooten said.

Another property she owns at 1123 Washington St., increased 116 percent. Only the second floor of the building has been renovated, which was completed in March. She has yet to have anyone inquire about occupying the lower floor of the building.

She argued that increasing the taxes on buildings so soon, rather than the seven years the tax abatement allows, will discourage more downtown property investment. She said some commercial buildings once refurbished may sit for a long period of time without an occupant.

“The purpose of the abatement is to lock it in to what you paid for it for seven years and then you can invest the money,” Wooten said. “If you’re going to re-assess me after the renovation, then what good is the abatement?”

“Developers need those seven years to try and get it to where you hope it will be,” Wooten said. “There’s nobody rushing in to downtown Vicksburg to rent commercial space. I have had signs on some of those buildings for three years and have had two calls on them. So I’m sitting there holding a lot of commercial space unrented. We are working hard to turn our downtown into something all of us can be proud of, but it can’t be done in a year or two. I don’t know if you remember what downtown looked like three years ago, but you should be thanking us for taking on these blighted properties.”

Many of the new development downtown includes mix-use development with apartments and retail, which Wooten also owns. According to Warren County Board of Supervisors President Richard George, the county ordinance doesn’t allow for residential abatement. Wooten said she understood all apartment buildings to be commercial development.

George advised that Wooten and Warren County Tax Assessor Ben Luckett sit down “and have a discussion” to determine if the properties are a tax abatement problem or a tax assessment issue.

“The abatement process is a wonderful idea, but it’s predicated not on the lengthy process of refurbishment and that causes problems,” George said. “Once you put something into commercial use, the tax assessor has no choice but to activate his duties and responsibilities on the property assessment.”

George said part of the problem is that all the work that is going on in the city doesn’t include the county. He said the ordinance involving tax abatement “has not worked out mechanically as well as it was thought of when they drew it up.”

George said the county will be “more rigid in applying the ordinance in a timely fashion regardless whether the city does so or not.”