Suppose a relative calls you up and says they have two houses they want to give you, free and clear with no strings attached. The houses are worth more than $500,000, or at least that what tax records say they are worth.

Would you take them? Is there a catch? Would you be suspicious?

Well, this is not unlike what is transpiring with Harford County government's proposal to give away two houses it owns on Tollgate Road, across from the Equestrian Center, to Catholic Charities, whose Anna's House affiliate has been using the properties for years as a temporary shelter for displaced women and their children.

The county administration says it doesn't need the houses and wants the Harford County Council to declare them surplus. Since the nonprofit Catholic Charities is already using the houses for a worthwhile cause, why not let the organization own them outright? That will free the county from having to maintain the dwellings and pay the overhead, which one county official says comes about to about $40,000 a year.

Sounds like a good deal all around, doesn't it? The county frees itself from an annual expense. The shelter service, obviously needed, will continue. The responsible operator of the shelter, Catholic Charities, becomes the responsible owner of the property.

But, is this really a good deal for us county's taxpayers? Based on the houses' assessed tax value, the county is giving away two dwellings and a little more than two acres that have a collective value of more than half a million dollars. Should we taxpayers condone just giving our valuable real estate away, even to a charity?

True, the Tollgate Road property might not be worth that much on the open market. The houses sit less than 100 yards from the Bel Air Bypass. Thousands of people walk by them weekly on the neighboring Ma & Pa Trail, and immediately to the east of them is a former dump. One house is about 50 years old, the other 15 years old. They will need repairs, some of them no doubt quite expensive. The county doesn't receive any rent or tax revenue from them now, so why keep them?

I'm not opposed to this deal per se. Still, there do seem to be some obvious questions that need to be answered:

Will the new owner be restricted to what the property can be used for? The current use is innocuous, but what if Catholic Charities decided the property might be better used for a soup kitchen like Our Daily Bread, or for a halfway house for people coming out of jail, or for a drug rehab center. Would we taxpayers be less inclined to favor giving the houses away? Suppose they end up as a treatment center for pedophile priests? You say that's preposterous? I say you are naive.

The new owner will be responsible for maintenance, but what is to ensure the property will be kept up? Granted the county has no say over how any private owner maintains his or her property, but most properties weren't given to someone by the county's taxpayers.

Can the new nonprofit owner sell the property without restriction? Obviously, it wouldn't look too good if the county gives the houses away and then Catholic Charities turns around and sells them for essentially a 100 percent profit, maybe to somebody who wants to open up a hot dog stand. Hey, don't tell me it's never happened.

The county owns all sorts of residential properties that it leases mostly to county employees — but also to a few nonemployees. These tenants supposedly pay rent, nominal though it may be when compared to the market, and are supposedly responsible for utilities. The tenants are caretakers, so to speak, but they aren't responsible for repairs, which is not atypical of most landlord/tenant relationships.

Perhaps the county ought to consider charging nominal rent on these two shelter houses, say the cost of the lost property taxes, about $5,000 annually, and require that the tenant pay the utilities, if it isn't doing so already. Yes, the taxpayers will still be responsible for those maintenance costs, but the value of the services provided should be considered an offset, just as they have been for many years under the current arrangement with Catholic Charities. And, just as important, the county will still hold on to its property and have control over how it is used in the future.

This is one of those deals that needs to be thoroughly vetted. It's the county council's responsibility to do the vetting. I wouldn't trust anything the county law department says one iota, given its past performance on other property transactions.

Unfortunately, I also have little confidence in this county council to do its job and protect the taxpayers. If some favored developer needs something, then the council is all over it. Such zeal does not, however, extend to Joe and Jane Citizen.