North Egypt News

City of West Frankfort City Council met June 30.

Here are the minutes provided by the council:

1. Mayor Arview Called The Meeting To Order At 1:00 P.M. Requesting A Roll Call. All Commissioners Were In

Attendance Including The City Clerk. The City Attorney Was Not Present.

2. The Mayor Stated The First Item On The Agenda Is Audience

Comments/Questions. I Do Not See Any Members Of The Audience Present.

3. Discussion, With Possible Action, Regarding Approval Of

Ordinances Pertaining To The Tif Iii Program. We Will Be Discussing Virtually With Moran Economic Development. As You Know, Discussing The Residential Tif, And So We Just Wanted To Kind Of Field Some Questions From The Commissioners And See What We Need To Do Or What We're Planning On Doing, How It's Going To Affect The Community, That Sort Of Thing. I Will Just Kind Of Open The Floor Now To Any Commissioners That Want To Ask Him Any Questions.

Commissioner Howard Stated First Question I Have Is, Is It My Understanding That All Future Increases In Assessed Value Would Go To The Tif And None Of That Would Go To The Local, Other Taxing Districts? Is That Correct?

Jared With Moran Stated Yes, So The Taxing Bodies Will Continue To Tax On What's Called The Base Value. The Base Value Would Be The Most Recent Assessment That's Final As Far As The County, So It's Usually The Year Before, So Let's Say It's 24 Eav. If The Properties In The Area Were To Increase In Value, Then The Taxes That Are Paid On That Increase, That's What Goes Into The Tif Fund. The Taxing Bodies Will Continue To Receive Everything That's Taxed On The Base Value, And Then Any Incremental Value Is What Goes Into The Tif Fund. With This Case Of This Particular Tif, We Had Some Assessed Values That Were Declining Or Stagnant Relative To The City. What That Means Is That Long-Term, Most Likely If Nothing Were To Happen In This Tif Area, That Portion That Would Be Diverted To The Tif Fund Would Be Pretty Minimal Relative To Both The Taxing Bodies' Total Tax Base And Also Relative To The Percentage Of The Tax Bill For All The Properties In The Tif That Actually Goes Toward That Tif Fund.

Commissioner Howard Stated I'm A Little Bit Concerned About Our School District. It's Struggling And I Don't Want To Take Anything. I Would Like Them To Share In The Future Increases, If Any.

Jared Stated In Most Cases, If We Were Going To Do A Tif And You Had A Developer That Said, I'm Going To Build 20 New Single-Family Homes In This Tif, I'm Going To Use Tif Money For That Project. That Would Be A Case Where We Would Probably Sit Down And Figure Out, What Portions Should We Give To The School For Eligible Projects, Because They're Going To See The Impact. Hypothetically, If You Have New Families, You're Probably Going To Increase School District Enrollment, And So That's Going To Be A Case Where You Want To Be Able To Help Out Your School Districts. In The Case Of This Tif, Like I Said, If Nothing Happens, It's Going To Be A Very Tiny, Tiny Percentage Of The School District's Total Tax Base, Which Would Be Diverted Into The Tif. Now, If You Have A Significant Amount Of Redevelopment Projects, If You Do See A Lot Of New Families Coming Into The City Because Of, You Know, Things You Have Going On In This Tif, The Overarching Thing Would Be The TIF Would Be A Success. That Would Be A Great Thing, But That's A Case Where Then You Want To Look At, Okay, Well, If We Do See New Families, If We Are Seeing New Increases In Enrollment For The School District, At That Point You Can Evaluate Whether You Should Enter Into An Agreement With The School District To Sort Of Share Some Of Those Tif Funds To Offset Those Costs.

The Mayor Stated Which I Believe We Did With The First Two Tif Districts. I Think There Is An Agreement.

Jared Stated In Some Cases, If You Know There's Going To Be An Impact, You Can Enter Into The Agreement Sort Of Upfront Or As You're Doing The Tif. In Other Cases, It's An Evaluation Of What's Going On With The Tif, And Over Time, You Know, It's A 23-Year Program. At Any Point, You Could Enter Into An Agreement With The School For This New Tif As Well, And It's Something That I Generally Advise Municipalities To Do Because You Don't Want To Hurt Your School Districts, And If You Have A Situation Where You're Putting Them In A Bad Spot Financially, That's Not Good For Any Community. The Same Is True For Any Of Your Taxing Bodies. The Tif Act Actually Has Provisions For Assisting Taxing Bodies That Are Impacted By The Establishment Of A Tif, And Some Common Examples We've Seen In That Is We See The Community That Wanted To Use Tif To Build A Hotel. If They Build A Hotel, Then The Fire District Is Going To Need A Ladder Truck Because They Can't Serve A Hotel Currently Given The Current State Of Their Equipment. In That Case, There Was A Intergovernmental Agreement With The Fire District To Share Some Of Those Tif Costs Because They Were Going To See An Increase In Their Costs. The Library District, If You Have An Increase Of People Needing Library Cards, You Can Help Out Your Library District As Well. Those Are Some Easier Examples To Point To As It's A, You Know, Sort Of A Direct Correlation From The Tif Going Into Place And Actually Increasing Their Costs. Overall, Whether It Be Now Or Any Point In The Future, If You Felt That The School Was Being Impacted, You Could Assist Them.

The Mayor Stated Would That Need To Be Written Into The Tif Plan, Or Could That Just Be An Agreement That We Make With The School Just Between Us? You Already Answered, We Don't Have To Do It Preemptively, But I Didn't Know If We Needed To Amend The Plan For That, Or If That Was An Agreement With The School Just Like We'd Have For Somebody Else Requesting A Tif.

Jared Stated How It's Worded In The Plan Is That Because Generally You Don't Want To Impact Any Taxing Bodies. And Also, Like I Said, The Tif Act Provides For A Means To Offset That. We Have Already Written It Into The Plan For The School And Any Other Taxing Bodies, And That If They Are Negatively Impacted, Then They Would Be Eligible To Receive Assistance To Offset That Impact. As It Pertains To The School Itself, As The School, You Know, I Talked To The Superintendent At The Public Hearing. I Gave Him My Card. I Said, I Know That You Weren't Able To Make It To The Former Joint Review Board Meeting, And He Actually Couldn't Stick Around After The Public Hearing. I Told Him At Any Point, You Know, This Is Not A Closed Door. If He Has Concerns Or Questions To Get A Hold Of Me, He's Not Yet. That Could Be Handled, You Know, As You Said, If The School District Has A Project, You Can Handle That Similar To A Developer Coming To You Asking For Assistance. You Can Evaluate That Project, Or If There Is A Feeling That This Is More Of A Broader Impact On The School District, At Any Point Down The Road, You Can Enter Into An Agreement That Would Do For The Annual Revenue Share. You Have A Variety Of Options On How To Handle It, But The Overall Point Would Be That You Would Still Have The Ability To Help Them Out If Something Comes Up.

Commissioner Howard Stated But That Also Means That Nothing Is Going In, Any Increases In Value Are Not Going Into Our General Fund For Use For City General Use, Is That Correct?

Jared Stated Yeah, You Are Also A Taxing Body On Those Properties, So Your General Fund Would Also Not See The Incremental Revenues, Or The Taxes On Those Incremental Revenues. In A Lot Of Cases Municipalities Can Use Tif Funds For Eligible Costs That Would Then Offset Funds From Other Funding Sources In The General Fund That You May Have Needed Those Funds For. You Would Still Be In Charge Of The Revenue Because It Would Be In Your Tif Fund. Just Not Your General Fund. Again, Unless There's A Lot Of Action Happening In This Tif, Which Would Be A Good Thing, These Are Probably Not Considerations You'd Really Have To Worry About At This Point, But You Could Always Take A Look From An Accounting Standpoint Of, You Know, Say You Could Do More Streets And Utility Projects In The Tif Area And Using Tif Money So That Might Alleviate Some Funding That You Had Set Aside From The General Fund For Those Types Of Projects. It Is Just A Matter Of Looking At Your Different Accounts And How Best To Use Them.

Commissioner Warren Stated So, You Can Use Tif Funds For Street Improvement? 

The Mayor Stated If It's In That Tif District.

Jared Stated It Is More Of A Concern For Communities Like Sesser Right Up The Road, And It Was Sort Of A Common Practice Years And Years And Years Ago Where They, There Was A Consultant That Would Put The Entire Municipality In A Tif. Which Over Time, The Tif Is Going To Increase In Value Because It's Got The Entire Municipality, Which In One Hand, There's A Lot Of Tif Money, But On The Other Hand, It's Capped The Entire Municipality's General Fund And Other Funds Because All That Incremental Revenue Is Going Into Tif. Those Are Cases Where You Really Do Have To Look At Your Account Balances And Try To Figure Out How To Offset That Impact By The General Fund Not Collecting On Those Revenues. But In This Case, Most Likely, It Wouldn't Be A Significant Consideration.

Commissioner Warren Stated Explain To Me What The People Will Need To Do To Benefit From The Tif District. What Is Eligible And What Is Not? Like, To Do To Their Homes. 

Jared Stated Generally Speaking, Things Like Rehab, Repair Projects, All Those Costs Are Eligible. Eventually, Once We Work Out The Details Of What The City Wants To Be In The Application, There Would Be A Tif Application That's Available. Anybody That's In The Tif Area Would Be Eligible To Apply For Tif Funding For A Project. Then From There, What You Do Is You Analyze What Sort Of Eligible Costs Are Associated With Someone's Project And Then Ultimately Create An Agreement If The City Wants To Provide Assistance For Those Costs. That Agreement Outlines Things Like How Much Money They're Eligible To Get, How Much Is Going To Be Paid Back On An Annual Basis, And All Those Things That Would Actually Be Required To Put That Agreement Into Effect. Then Those Agreements Are Generally Paid Out. A Person Completely Rehabs Their Home, It Causes The Property To Go Up In Value And Say They're Paying $1,000 More In Property Taxes, Just A Rough Number. Then If You Were Going To Reimburse 50% Of That, Then After They Get Their Tax Bill, Their New Tax Bill On Those Improvements, They Would Pay In The $1,000. They Would Pay Those Taxes And Then You Reimburse After You've Received The Tax Revenue. None Of These Tif Agreements Or None Of These Projects Are Generally Paid Out Sort Of Obligations Or Any Debt. Basically As Somebody Pays The Taxes, Then You Can Reimburse Them.

Commissioner Warren Stated If It Raised Their Taxes $1,000, We Could Benefit Them At $500? That's What They Would Get?

Jared Stated You Could Do Whatever You'd Like, But That Would Be An Example Of A 50% Agreement On An Annual Basis.

Commissioner Warren Stated Is That A One-Time Thing For Them That They Get Paid? 

Jared Stated You Can Structure It As A One-Time Payment Or You Can Structure It As Five Years, 50% Each Year Until They Reach Their Eligible Cost Maximum. At A Certain Point, If You Have Revenues Available In The Tif Fund, You Could Do Like A Grant, Which Is Part Of A One-Time Payment For Those Costs. It's Hard To Give A Clear Answer Because A Lot Of Those Are Decisions The City Will Ultimately Have To Make. But There'll Be A Variety Of Ways In Which You Could Sort Of Help Out Those Homeowners.

Commissioner Warren Stated Basically The Only Way You Can Raise Your Property Taxes Is The Outside Of The House. They Don't Look At The Inside. It's Siding And Roofing And Windows, A Driveway Maybe, Or Add An Addition On. Because They Don't Go In Your House.

Jared Stated It's Not To Say That If There's Any Interior Improvements, Most Folks Won't Limit It To The Exterior Because You Sort Of Want To Think About It As You Are Funding Projects That Are Also Going To Be Paying Into The Tif. You Have Projects That Are Going To Create The Reassessment. What You're Saying Is True Is That The

Assessor Is Not Going Into Your House And Checking On Your Foundation Or Something Like That.

But These Sort Of Exterior Projects That Are Going To Potentially Cause That Reassessment, Those Are The Projects You'd Like To Fund Because They Are Actually Paying Into The Tif Fund, Which You Are Then Using That To Reimburse Them. So That's Why Generally The Structure Of Someone Does A Project, They Pay Their New Taxes, You Reimburse Them. That's Sort Of The Better Means Of Doing It Because You Can Tell Somebody You Want To Give Them Money For Their Project, But The Assessor Might Not Come Out And Reassess Their Property. Then You Would Have Given Them Money For A Project Which Then Caused No Increase In Their Assessment, So You Didn't Actually Get Any Money In Your Tif Fund. You Want To Be Sort Of Careful About Doing Things Upfront Money.

Commissioner Warren Stated That's Where The Bringing The Receipts In And Showing Us Everything And Like We're Supposed To Do. Does That Include Heating And Air Conditioning Or Anything Like That? Because I Know Some People Need It, Or Is That A Decision The City Makes?

Jared Stated That Could Be A Decision The City Makes, And Its Sort Of When Somebody Does A Project, The Idea Is Generally That They Say They're Going To Do Something Significant. They Tell You Everything They're Going To Do. And Then What We Do, A Lot Of Times When We're Helping Out With The Redevelopment Agreement And The Analysis Of The Project, We Then Find What Are The Best Eligible Costs To Reimburse For. They May Have A Whole List Of Costs And You Know You Mentioned Things Like A New Addition. Generally Speaking, New Construction Is Not Tif Eligible, But If They Said We Were Going To Build A New Garage And Do New Windows, New Roof, Driveway, Sidewalks, All That, They Can Tell Us All That Info And Then What We Would Do Is Tell You, Okay Here's The Things That You Should Be Reimbursing The Tif, Or Using Tif To Reimburse For, Here's How Much Those Costs Are, And Then You Can Put Together An Agreement Where You Know Somebody May Be Doing A Larger Project, But Then You Identify Certain Things That You Want To Help Out With Through The TIF.

Commissioner Howard Stated It Is Also My Understanding That It Would Be Maybe A Couple Of Years Before There Would Be Any Money Coming In. In The Meantime, How Do We Pay Anybody Or Reimburse Anybody For Any Money?

Jared Stated It Works On The Property Tax Cycle. If You Adopt Your Ordinances This Year, Next Year Is When The Tif Would Show Up On The Tax Bills, But If You Think About How Your Taxes Are Paid, So Next Year Being 2026, You Will Pay Those Taxes In 2027, But If Somebody Wanted To Do A Project, You Know, Between When You Adopt Your Ordinances For The Tif And When You Actually Pay The Taxes, You Could Do Any Sort Of Agreement You Wanted, But Again, If You're Only Paying Out After They Pay Their Taxes, They Would Do The Project, The Assessor Would Come Out, They'd Pay The New Taxes, And Then When You Get The Tax Revenue, Yeah It Might Be A Year Or Two Down The Road When It Actually Hits Your Bank Account, But That's How You're Avoiding Having To Go Into Any Sort Of Debt, Is That You're Not Paying Anything Out Until The Taxes Are Paid. You Can Still Do An Agreement That Says We Are Going To Pay You, And You Just Wouldn't Actually Pay Until They've Made The Property Taxes.

Commissioner Warren Stated Does That Include Solar? Is That An Improvement? 

Jared Stated Solar Is Assessed At A Megawatt, So Whatever The Capacity Of The Solar Is, Is How The Assessor Would Calculate That, And It's Treated As Real Property The Same As Any Other Improvements. So, If There Is Solar, Or There Were To Be A Solar Development In This Area, Then The Assessor Would Look At That Property Value Versus The Base Value. In Most Cases, Solar, Undeveloped Property, Not Generating A Lot Of Revenue, And Then If They Build A One-Megawatt Facility On That Property, It's Assessed At I Think It's $218,000 Per Megawatt. The Dav Would Be $60,000-Ish, $70,000 Times Your Tax Rate.

Commissioner Warren Stated We Mean On A Roof, Not A Business. Does That Increase Your Property Value, Putting Solar On There?

Jared Stated I Don't Think I've Ever Seen An Assessor Come Out And Increase The Property Value Because Of Solar, No.

Commissioner Warren Stated In Our Town, We Have Only About 7,000 People, I Think. I Looked It Up On Google In The Census, And Most Of Our People Are Retired, And $50,000 A Year Is Your Base. I'm Wondering How Many People Are Going To Do This, Because If You're Going To Have To Wait Two Or Three Years To Get Money, Or One Or Two Years To Get Reimbursed, And You Only Get Maybe Half Of The Money.

Commissioner Howard Stated They're Only Going To Get Reimbursed On Their Property Taxes, They're Not Going To Get Reimbursed On The Cost.

Commissioner Warren Stated Right, They're Not Going To Pay For The New Sidewalk Or Driveway Or Garage, They're Going To Get Paid On The Other. Will There Be Enough People To Afford To Do This? Because They Haven't Done It Yet. You Know What I'm Saying? 

I'm Just Wondering If It's Worth All The Paperwork And The Trouble. It Is A Good Idea, But I'm Just Wondering.

Jared Stated Overall, I Think Once The Program, It's Not Going To Happen Next Month, It's Not Going To Happen In A Few Months. But Over Time, What Will Happen Is That Eventually Your Tif Will Start To Collect Money, Both From Just General Appreciation, If You Give It Long Enough, Or If You Have Some Projects Happening. Once You Get Those Things To Start Happening, You Can Get Folks To Participate More, To See That. If Somebody Was On The Fence About Doing A Project, This Will Be Some Material Dollars To Offset Those Project Costs. Then If You Get A Few Of Those People That Are Doing Projects, Eventually Your Tif Could Have Money Where You Could Start Doing Upfront Dollars For Projects. You Could Give Grants To Say, If You Are Going To Do Something, We'll Give You Money Up Front, Because Eventually You Know That You Will Collect That Money Into Your Tif Fund. Right. And So Early On, With The TIF’s Touching, You Could Potentially Move Tif Money From Tif To Tif If You Needed To Or Wanted To. But There's Also Other Programs. You Could Potentially Use The Enterprise Zone Through An Amendment To Overlay This To Offset. You Can Do It To Where You Get Rid Of The Cost For Building Materials For Projects In This Area. It's Sort Of, You Know, The Tif's Not Going To Magically Solve All The Issues In This Area. But It's Probably Going To Be Your Biggest Tool To Try To Help Some Of Those Issues. You Know, The Downside Would Be Only That After A Certain Point, You Probably Didn't Do As Much As You Maybe Wanted To If Things Don't Go That Great. The Upside Would Be That You Do Have A Tool That You Could Use To Try To Get Folks To Try To Help Them Make Improvements And Also Help The Viability Of Maybe Some Properties. You Know, A Developer Might See That Tif Is Available, And There's A Lot Of Developers That Work With Tif That Know How The Program Works. That Could Get Somebody To Maybe Buy Some Homes And Do Some Rehab Projects, Knowing That They Could Leverage Tif To Sort Of Get A Break On Some Of Those Project Costs. You Get Hopefully Some Things Happening That Otherwise Would Not Have Had If The TIF's Not In Place.

Commissioner Warren Stated Is This Available To Landlords That Have Renters? If Landlords Want To Improve Their Properties Instead Of Just The Homeowners? It Would Be The Landlords That Could Do It.

Jared Stated Yeah, If You Have Landlords In This Area That You Know Who They Are, I Would Encourage You To Reach Out To Them, Tell Them Tif Is Available. That Might Be A Tool That They Would Use To Maybe Make Some Improvements To Their Properties. If They're Not Familiar With How Tif Works, Get Them Up To Speed, Get Them On Application, Try To Encourage Them To Make Some Improvements In Those Properties.

Commissioner Warren Stated It Is A Benefit To Somebody That Would Like A Construction Company That Would Come In And Say They Want To Build Fifty Small Homes To Provide For People. They Could Do This, Or All New Buildings If They Had The Land. Or They Could Purchase The Land If There Was Land In The Area.

It Would Be Good For A Construction Company, I Guess, Is What You're Saying? 

Jared Stated Yeah, And Like I Said, There's Developers Probably In The City That Know Tif Programs In Other Municipalities. They Know How The Program Works, And Some Of Those Developers Actually Seek Out Tif Districts As Opportunities Because They Know That For Those Eligible Costs They Can Get. They Want To Do Projects, And Having Tif As An Option Makes Those Projects That Much More Viable From Their Perspective.

Commissioner Warren Stated This Could Go To The Mayor, I Guess. Has Any Of The Taxing Bodies That We Sent Letters Out To, Have They Contacted You About It If They're Interested? Like Dave Wilmore, Denning Township?

The Mayor Stated They Didn't Come To The Meeting. We Had A Meeting For That.

Commissioner Warren Stated Do We Have To Have Their Consent To Do Anything Like This? Does It Take Funds From Them And Put It Elsewhere? Does Denning Township Benefit From This? 

The Mayor Stated It Is The Same As Any Other Taxing District. It Is Taking The Money Away From Them. Just Like It's Taken Away From The School. But To Invest In That Community. So, You Know, Even Like The Schools, Like You Said, I Feel Like That When You Mentioned What Our Population Is, It's Declined. It's Not Going To Go Up Unless We Do Something. Like He Said, I Know There Are Developers

That Look At Different Municipalities. They Specifically Go In For This Reason, You Know, To Develop Houses.

I Would Say Housing, But Not Like Federal Housing Type.

Commissioner Warren Stated You Could Buy A Junky Little House And Fix It Up And Be Reimbursed And The Neighborhood Would Look Better.

The Mayor Stated That's Also Going To Help Us For These Properties That We End Up Taking And Then Demolishing And Then Selling The Lot. We Wouldn't Have To Do That. We Could Sell It.

They Could Buy It As It Is Because They Know They Have Tif Available To Be Able To Actually Repair The House That's On It.

Commissioner Warred Stated You Can Flip House. Can You Flip A House Like That? You Have To Sell The House Or? If Somebody Wants To Improve The Neighborhood.

Jared Stated The Other Side Of It, Too, Is That, You Know, There's A Lot Of Municipalities That Have An Issue With Demolition In The First Place. You Know, A Long Demolition List. You Only Have So Much Funds For Those. And If You Can't Get Somebody To Redevelop Them Or If It's Just Beyond Repair, Demolition Is Also An Eligible Cost For TIF. You Could Use Your Tif Fund If Funds Are Available To Assist With Some Of Those. 

Commissioner Warren Stated That's Good To Know Because We Have To Advertise And We Have To Do All That Cost And It's All For That. 

Jared Stated The Bigger Picture; There's No Real Downside To Tif Being There. The Downside Would Be For Your Taxing Bodies If, Say, You Knew There Was A Huge Development Coming In. They Didn't Want Any Tif Dollars, But You Guys Did A Tif Anyways Just To Capture All That New Money And Take It Away From Your Taxing Districts.

That's The Downside To Tif And That's A Misuse Of The Program. But Otherwise, Like I Said, You Know, You May Look Back In Ten To Twenty Years On This Tif And If Not, A Lot Was Accomplished, That Would Be The Downside. At This Point, It Would Give You A Tool To Try To Make Positive Changes. And, You Know, For The Way, Based On Historic Growth Trends In This Area.

Commissioner Warren Stated It Can Not Hurt Us To Have A Tif Iii. It Will Just Be Sitting There Available.

The Mayor Stated That Was My Thinking With Going With The Lowest Property Values, Lowest Area Of Town Is That It Would Have To Least Impact On Other Taxing Bodies. It Is Not A Dollar Amount It Is A Percentage Of The Property Values. That Is Why I Did Not To The Whole Town.

Jared Stated As Far As The Taxing Bodies That The Mayor Said, The Whole Tif Process Is Geared Towards Making Sure They Are All Notified On What Is Going On. They Received Several Notices And Mailings, Then We Had A Meeting Of The Joint Review Board Where They Were All Invited To Come And Ask Questions. We Have Got Through All Of That And Haven’t Heard Anything From The Taxing Bodies. If We Would Have Had Questions From Them These Would All Be Addressed. Now We Are At The Point Where It Is Up To You Guys To Decide If You Want To Implement It.

The Mayor Stated As Far As The School Goes, Andrea And I Have Talked To Matt, He Was The One That Brought Up He Wasn't Aware We Had An Agreement With The Other Tif Districts With The School. I Am Fine With Having Some Agreement On This One With Him Too. That Why They Are Not Missing That Much. It Will Mean There Will Be Less Available In The Tif When You Are Doing That. With It Being Connected To The Other Districts We Can Utilize Other Funds That Way Too. I Think It Is The Best Way To Go About It Like Jared Said Is At The Beginning To Say That It Is A Percentage Of The Increase In The Tax Bill. There Are Some Opponents To This, I Believe Is Their Goal Is To Keep Property Values Low So That They Can Continue To Slide By The System. They Should Be Taking Advantage Of This Program And Fix Up Their Houses, It Could Help Them Even Raise Their Rent. The More People To Take Advantage Of It, The Better Overall The Community Becomes. I Don't Think Any Project We Would Do Would Put Any Kind Of Ownership Completely Out Of Reach To People Who Could Potentially Own Even Today. Five Years From Now It Would Still Be Affordable To Them. It Will Make It Look Better. If They Don't Need To Spend Money On A Roof, They Can Spend Money On Heating And Air.

Commissioner Warren I Seen Where Marion Is Building A Bunch Of Homes, Is That A Tif Type Of Situation?

The Mayor Stated Yes, That Was A Clear Demonstration Of What Tif Can Do Because It Was A Developer That Came In There. Tif Attracts Developers.

Commissioner Stanley Stated If Someone Comes In A Gets An Application For Tif Do They Spend Money Out Of Their Pocket, Or Do We Reimburse Them? 

The Mayor Stated The Way, I Understand It, Is It Is Up To Us. That Is How We Have Done It Historically. That Way You Don't Get Someone That Is Just Wanting Free Money. They Will Put Some Into The Project And We Will Put Some In It Too. By Doing It As A Reimbursement That Ensures That They Are Actually Going To Do The Work, And Then We Give Them The Money Afterwards.

Commissioner Warren Stated I Don't Want To Take From Another Tif, If We End Up Getting Something That Comes Here And Needs It In That Area.

The Mayor Stated We Do Not Have To Take Money From The Other Tif Districts. But By Connecting Them It Will Help Make It Available Incase Something Big Comes In.

Commissioner Warren Stated Basically We Are Not Out Any Money Doing A Residential Tif. Until Someone Does It Then We Would Have To Reimburse Them. But It Will Be A Couple Of Years So We Get Tax Money In To Put Into That The Difference In To The Fund. Unless We Decided We Are Going To Do It Sooner For Them. But If We Do Not Have Any Money, We Can Not Do That. If They Agree To Wait A Couple Years Until It Builds Up, Because Everyone Knows Its New. It Will Not Cost The City Anything Right? 

Jared Stated No, The Most Likely Scenario Would Be You Would Have An Application, It Will Say Fill Out All Of Your Information, Tell Us What You Are Wanting To Do. It Will Have The General Terms Of The Rebate They Will Get. The Terms Would Say That Upon Competition Of Your Project Whenever You Pay Your Taxes Then You Will Be Reimbursed From That Money You Paid From Your Taxes. It Is Not Advertised As Do Your Project And Then Wait A Couple Years And We Will Get You Your Money. It Is More So, Do Your Project After Your Property Is Reassessed You Will Get A Portion Of That Back As Reimbursement For Doing The Project In The First Place. Other Side People Will Complain And Say I’m Not Going To Get Much Money Back Since My Taxes Are Not Going To Go Up. The Benefit To That Is You Improved Your Property And Won't Have To Pay That Much More On Taxes.

The City Clerks Stated How Much Does It Cost, If We Will Be Submitting Them To You, Or Will The Council Decide That On Their Own? 

Jared Stated You Can Work It However You Would Want To. If You Have A Standardized Process At Some Point If You May Get To Were You Get The Application And You Know How To Handle It, And It Takes Council Approval Or In Other Cases If You May Ask For Help And Ask Us How Much Money Will This Generate, How Much Should We Give Them? Those Cases We Put Together A Recommendation That Gives The City Council All Of The Information You Would Want. 

The Mayor Stated The Tif Fund Can Build, Say No One Applies For Anything And Doesn't Use It. But The County Decides To Raise Taxes, There Will Be Money Towards TIF From That. Commissioner Howard Instead Of The School, Townships, Etc.

Commissioner Warren Stated So They School Will Get The Base Rate And Not The Improvements For The Next Twenty- Three Years? Commissioner Howard Stated Yes.

Jared Stated This Tif Would Be Around Seven Percent Of The School Districts Entire Tax Base. Then Combine That With The Lose Value, Total Assessment When Down And The Rest Of The School District Was Going Up. There Still Is Tax On The Seven Percent That Will Be Frozen. It Is Just The Increase Above That. If You Do Not Change The Growth There Wouldn't Be Any Money The School Will Miss Out On Because There Will Be No Money Going In Tif. There Is No Missing Out On Money Because The Money Invested In The TIF Area Is Because The Tif Being There.

The Mayor Stated You Can Say They Wont Gain Money On Any Improvements Made, But The Improvements Wouldn't Have Been Made If We Didn't Do It Anyway. That Is The Assessed Value That Is Frozen Not The Rate That Is Frozen, If They Were To Increase The Rate, They Still Would Get An Increase Because It Would Be Assessed On The Based Value That Frozen.

Jared Stated Yes, They Will Be Taxing The Based Value At A Higher Rate, So They Will See More Taxes If The Rate Goes Up. At One Of Our Conferences There Was A School Superintendent That Was Talking About Being Supportive With Tif, The Community Used Tif For Single Family Residential Neighborhoods And The School Missed Out On That Revenue. But For The Fact That The School Seen An Increase In Enrollment They Were Given Funding From The State Based On That Head Count, He Said It Saved The School District. With How The State Looks At Their Funding For The School District It Will Be Based On The Based Value. It The Increases In The Tif Will Not Hurt Them.

Commissioner Stanley Stated Do You Think This Is Something We Should Be Doing Before The Audit Gets Done?

The Mayor Stated To Me It Is Not Relevant, It Is Not Money Coming Out From Us. It Is Tax Money That Is Being Paid By The Residence. They Only Way, I See It Impacting Us Would Be If There Was A Street Project That We Needed To Do In A Different Part Of Town And If We Would Have Normally Taken It From The Money We Got From That Part Of Town.

The City Clerk Stated You Have Already Spent Around $30,000.00. The Mayor Stated That Was Our Administrative Cost To Get It Established.

The Mayor Stated Is There An Expiration On This?

Jared Stated For This Tif And Everything You Have Done It Would Need To Be Adopted Within Ninety Days Of The Public Hearing. If It Was After That You Would Have To Do Mailing, Hearings All Over Again.

The Mayor Stated Do We Want To Take A Vote On Them Now?

Commissioner Howard Stated I Would Like To Take A Little Bit More Time To Think About It.

The Mayor Stated This Item Was Tabled Until July 8th.

4. With No Further Business To Be Discussed, The Meeting Was Adjourned On A Motion By Commissioner Harkins.

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