This morning’s WSJ article on TIF got me thinking . . . about something we did alot of thinking about months ago.
If you had to make decisions about the limited amount of TIF dollars in the City of Madison, how would you spend them? What would you base your decisions on? Would it be the impact of the change that a project can bring to a neighborhood? How would you measure the community benefits of these projects? Would you prioritize the “generator” project for the district? (i.e. a large project that would start creating tax dollars to repay the TIF district) Would you consider what would happen if the projects don’t go forward or what other public projects won’t have money to be completed. (i.e. what happens to things like the mayor’s promises of money to move rail lines?) Would you look at the value created by the projects? What else should we be looking at when we make these decisions beyond the bottom line to the taxpayer? Jobs? Retail opportunities? Housing?
Consider the following projects:
Mortensen Investments/Landmark Place
Wants $4.2M – The City will get taxes on a $20M project (Taxpayers help with 21% of the projected value generated)
Gorman/800 E Washington Ave
Wants approximately $3.8M – The City will get taxes on $58M (Taxpayers help with 6.5% of the projected value generated)
Original request would have been $7M on an $84M project (Taxpayers help with 8% of the projected value generated)
McGrath/Union Corners
Wants $6.2M – The City will get taxes on $55.9M first phase project (Taxpayers help with 11% of the projected value generated)
McGrath/First Street project – no info yet
University Square/Executive Management
Wants $7-10M – The City will get taxes on $44.4M portion of the project (Taxpayers help with 16 to 22% of the projected value generated)
Allied Drive
Up to $5.8M – on a $??M project
BioAg Gateway
$2-3M – on $??M project
Kipp
$2.5 to $6.7M on a $??M project
Projects approved in the last year
Monroe Commons
$2.3M for $22.9M project (Taxpayers helped with 10% of the projected value generated)
Randy Alexander/Capital West
$4.27M for the $47.2M project (Taxpayers helped with 9% of the projected value generated)
Covance
$4.6M for $50M project (Taxpayers helped with 9% of the projected value generated)
Gorman on Allied/Avalon Village
In this case the City bought for the land for $3.5M and sold it for $1.56M or assisted the project with approximately $2M for the $13.1M project. (Taxpayers helped with 15% of the projected value generated)
How much money should we be borrowing for TIF? Which projects do you think would be the best use of taxpayer dollars? And whatever happened to the discussion on changes to the City of Madison TIF policy discussed nearly a year ago?
Obviously, since I sat on the subcommittee of the Board of Estimates and worked with Progressive Dane, I agree with much of what is in those proposals. I think we would be making better decisions if we would have resolved these big policy issues prior to these projects coming forward.
