The Innsbrook Board of Trustees voted unanimously to dissolve the village’s Community Development Corporation at their Aug. 12 meeting. 

The CDC was originally developed as a vehicle to pursue a USDA loan in May 2021 for the construction of the new village hall and was also used to purchase the property where the village’s new hall sits. 

The village ended up abandoning the USDA loan application and pursued other avenues to fund the construction of the new building. Since then the CDC, and the bank account associated with it, have sat idle. 

According to Board Chairman Cynthia Bowers, the village has $500 in that bank account and since it has sat idle for too long at the end of the month the bank would have begun assessing penalties on the account for inactivity. 

“We have $500 in a bank account, that if we don’t do anything it will get charged $10 every month,” said Bowers. 

She felt the board should dissolve the CDC and move the funds into the village’s general revenue fund. 

Village Attorney Bradley Prior spelled out how, since the CDC was a public benefit corporation, there was a multi-step process to legally dissolve it. He also said there would be a cost associated with that dissolution. 

Prior said he thought the cost of dissolution could be up to $1,500. 

Prior said the village would have to publish notice of the dissolution and file paperwork with both the Missouri Secretary of State’s and the Missouri Attorney General’s offices. 

The dissolution also required express written consent from the CDC’s board, which is separate from the village’s board and was made up of the board of trustees that approved its creation. 

Instead of dissolving the CDC, the village could have also removed and replaced funds in the bank account to avoid the penalties for inactivity and found another use for the organization. 

“The other option would be to keep the CDC open, to continue to file the registration reports,” said Prior. “The idea is that you could keep the CDC open for the chance that there may come a point in time where that could be used for some purpose.”

That option would have come with the continued administrative costs and the current board would have also had to assume control of the organization. 

Trustee Donna West wondered if the CDC could be used to pursue grant opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to the village as a government entity. 

“There are opportunities out there, under which your CDC could apply, but they also have to be projects that we in our village would want to do,” said Trustee Linda Buschman. 

Buschman felt that between finding a grant the CDC could apply for, that fit the village’s needs and with a matching requirement the village could afford, the options would be limited. 

Village Planner Todd Streiler mentioned the village could also dedicate sales tax funds to the CDC to build a fund for grant matching. 

Prior said although CDCs have been used for that purpose in the past, tax districts like community and neighborhood improvement districts are a more common vehicle for that use. 

In the end the board felt that with the questions about its usefulness and the prospect of constantly having to shuffle the CDC board with the current board, it made more sense to dissolve the corporation at this time.