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Virginia Shapard Church is a 4th generation Griffin native. She earned her undergraduate degree and her law degree from Georgia State University, finishing the latter in 2001. Ms. Church has practiced with the firms of Mullins, Whalen & Westbury and Galloway & Lyndall, and Freeman, Mathis & Gary in Atlanta. She has served as both Assistant to the City Manager for Griffin as well as Deputy County Manager for Spalding County. She currently practices part time at The Dinoff Law Group, LLC in Griffin. Ms. Church joined the Land Bank Authority as Executive Director in July 2019 with a vision for improving the housing stock in Griffin-Spalding County. “A lot of the Land Bank’s inventory is small, vacant parcels in the old mill villages where the back taxes owed are higher than the value of the land. The Board tries to have buyers consolidate tiny tracts into larger ones where a home for owner-occupancy can be built that also has a yard and parking area. In other areas of the county, we simply want to increase the stock of owner-occupancy housing. Once the properties are generating taxes again, the Board goes through the procedure to extinguish the back taxes, which is the only thing that makes a lot of these properties worth buying to begin with,” according to Ms. Church The plan seems to be working, as there are currently over 90 pieces of property in the Land Bank’s pipeline to be sold.