Salem Community High School Superintendent Brad Detering presented his concerns about Salem’s TIF District 4 at Monday night’s school board meeting. Detering shared a map of the proposed TIF, which he said may be larger than it needs to be.
“Some of the concerns that we would have about TIF 4 is the size that it’s grown to,” Detering said. “When it was originally conceptualized it was a little more of a residential TIF in a specific area of the city, and then did include some adjacent business areas. From there, the TIF has continued to expand.”
Detering is concerned that the district as it is currently planned could do more harm than good to some taxpayers.
“There are just some concerns about the expansion of that, and what that would possibly do to the tax rate. If that amount of EAV was frozen, and then any future increases to that EAV were frozen, and then any future increases to that EAV were not allowed to be on the tax rolls, that might have a negative impact on the taxing bodies’ tax rates.”
During the meeting, Detering stressed the importance of city council members being involved at every stage of the process for creating the TIF District so that members understand what they’re voting on. He mentioned an alternative to the TIF 4, multiple smaller districts, which could solve some of the problems with the size of the district but comes with its own downsides.
“A concern was raised about such a large TIF, if it wouldn’t be better to have smaller, multiple TIFs, but the city actually has concerns over that because of the cost of implementing an individual TIF district. Then they would bear that cost multiple times. It’s difficult from the standpoint of, while it would solve one problem, it does create another problem.”
Detering said the estimated cost of creating a new TIF district is $20,000.
