I don’t think I’ve ever watched an entire school board meeting. It was . . . different. I’d say the most awkward part of the meeting is where they discussed what types of information requests were appropriate and what was not. The Superintendent wanted to be able to deny requests for information that were too time consuming in consultation with the Board President. Seriously. That didn’t fly. They preferred for it to be discussed with the requester at the time of the request. It was a running theme throughout the meeting with complaints about last minute information dumps on Monday before their meeting, lack of information and concerns about getting complete budget information. But I digress . . .
TIF COORDINATOR
Prior to the meeting, I asked Joe Gromacki, the TIF Coordinator for the City of Madison if he was going to attend the meeting. He said no, he was not. I asked why, he said he didn’t have a revised application from Hammes and he doesn’t know what the boundaries of the district are going to be, so there was nothing to talk about. He then proceeded to talk about the misinformation that was out there about the TIF and things that were being said by school board members that were inaccurate. I pointed out, that perhaps, that would be a reason to attend. That didn’t fly either . . . which frustrated me as I explained how people needed more information and how they were arriving at the numbers they were using. He explained why they were wrong. It seems that we all were not served well by the lack of that discussion happening.
DISCUSSION
Ed Hughes explained during his City-School Board Liaison report that at the City’s request, on April 7th, the next meeting, they will be discussing TIF and TID policy.
They also discussed it under the Legislative Liaison Reprt. Maya Cole chaired this portion of the meeting. Arlene Silveira and Dan Nerad clarified that they are just having a general discussion, there is no defined proposal yet, but they are going to begin to discuss and share their concerns.
Beth Moss says that wants to avoid what happened last time a TIF district came to us – I don’t want to have to go through that again.[There was no further explanation of what happened last time.]
Silveira explains she asked for it to be on the agenda as did Lucy Mathiak separately, she says there has been lots of discussion and much is around whether or not TIF could better benefit the school district. She requested it be on the agenda when it appeared they City was beginning to fast track the process. They were supposed to go to Board of Estimates last week, but that was rescheduled. As it is moving through the process she felt it was in the school board’s best interest to have general decision even if they had nothing to direct Mathiak to do since they have no proposal yet. She wants to see how it impacts the school district and what we could do before a lot of the voting came down to get their message out there, she says they can’t just depend upon Mathiak. If we agree with her, we could have a stronger voice, if not, now is the time to express their opinion.
Hughes says that has a question for Mathiak. He asks if when the extension of the downtown TID to spiff up the square that they authorized her to vote against, did she vote against it and was she the only one?
Mathiak says she was, but she is not sure what will happen with this one. She was the only one to vote against the expansion [Mathiak is one of 5 votes on the TIF Joint Review Board. The other members are from the other taxing entities of the County (Dave Worzala, County Treasuer), School Board (Lucy Mathiak) and MATC (Roger Price) and citizen representative Gary Poulson]and she thinks that is what got her started thinking about not general idea of TIF districts. She is concerned with the notion that when they expand a TIF district there are properties that should go back on our taxes rolls and they should get full taxes, instead go back off for 20 or 30 years. [Exactly how long a district stays open after the extension of a district is up to the state law limit (27 years?) and what the city spends. While the Joint Review board approves the “plan”, what happens after that is determined by the city.]. She says that she was following the Edgewater, but it was not until TID 23 where there was some high value downtown development that they were deferring their full share of their property taxes out into the future. For the Edgewater this is problematical, they say it couldn’t be closed for 5 to 7 years, but she says what is keeping it open is $8M for Edgewater, if she is not mistaken. She says that at a time when they are desperately trying to find money for schools and get property tax relief for tax payers they are being hobbled by extending life of the TIF and not getting value of full taxes for the district. She says the reason to expand the district is that the Edgewater on its own cannot repay the loans if it was freestanding, to her that is problematical. Do they mortgage schools and our children’s future on downtown real estate that most of us won’t be using, we can’t afford it. That is the dilemma they find themselves in, and they are caught up in hype of city politics. She is concerned about their lack of understanding of TIF, she says when she did vote on 23 she didn’t know as much as she knows now. These are not minor proprieties, we would be getting our share of property taxes if they had not gone up in value, but they have gone way up and that has an impact on us.
Maya suggests that during this discussion if need to follow up with letter to community to reiterate these issues to the community, not sure community reads and understands it, a lot of issues with taxation and high value properties and especially during budget time, this is a resource we can’t take advantage of. This will come to a head with the budget. Last time they drafted a letter it turned out pretty well, given response of current delegation at state level, have to continue to advocate for the district Anyone want to work on that?
Hughes says if that is will of body, they should wait until the City-School Board Liaison Committee meeting to allow city to attempt to address our concerns.
Mathiak says that one other thing came out during the TID 23 vote was that the Capital Square and State Street properties don’t pay like the school district does when there are improvements. The schools pay when they we get a stop light or round about or street improvements, we are assessed for half of the costs. It came out is that the Capital Square and State St. properties don’t have to pay anything, all these improvements are being done at no charge to property owners in the area. She says she will leave it to the alders to decide if that is just. She says they felt like the three stooges (Roger Price, Dave Worzala and her) because this is the first they had heard of this. She says she would like equal consideration and she would like to find alders that will find way to address that. Could we find a way to be exempt from assessment? She says they found this out at a noon meeting and that afternoon they reviewed a Shorewood TIF and they found out that there they don’t charge the schools for street improvements.
Maya asks if they are going to wait on the letter until April 7th? Seems to be consensus. She says that anyone on the board or anyone watching this who wants to contact alder, they should request consideration to do the same, would appreciate it.
Arlene wants to make sure it is not too late . . . to wait til April 7th.
Mathiak and her decide they are having difficulty scheduling meetings and think it will be ok.
WRAP UP
And with that they were done. The question remains in my mind about how they will determine how TIF impacts the schools. Are they relying on the city to tell them that? Do they have their own staff that can crunch numbers for them? I’d love to know how long a TIF district should be open to optimize the schools investment, is there a certain value of buildings they need to have to make it worth while? Is there a size of a TIF district that become too big? etc. etc. etc. I could go on . . .
