January 23, 2005
DDA Captures Local, County and State School Taxes
The DDA document shows that their incremental "TIF" tax capture includes ALL of the county taxes, including school taxes otherwise headed for the Van Buren ISD (County Schools) and Lake Michigan College. DDA captures all the state school taxes as well.
City of South Haven taxes are not exempt from capture either: City school taxes of nonhomestead properties (in the original DDA district) are in DDA coffers to the tune of 18 mils.
They've been capturing those school taxes since DDA was formed 20 years ago.
This means that DDA has all the TIF district monies voted for in the school, college, drug enforcement, Headley rollback and street repair millage votes passed by voters the last three years. We did not get what we voted for.
From where else is the DDA taking revenue? The Van Buren County taxes, City of South Haven general operating budget, narcotics enforcement, streets, refuse, library, hospital and senior services.
The DDA document reveals that DDA takes in 54.9506 mils from the original district and 24.7494 mils from the more recently annexed district #2 (the state outlawed school tax capture by then).
This is interesting: DDA claims they have captured about $1/2 million in taxes in the last 4 years. Yet they have spent many, many millions and the new plan calls for many millions more. So, what they are doing is leveraging their future revenue against large debt to fund what they want to do. The law says that they can do that.
But is it being done responsibly? Are the choices good ones?
The debt makes sure that DDA cannot be disbanded, that's for sure. But we can surely stop them from expanding their debt to highway billboards and TV advertising. And we can insist that they scale back the district to exclude prime residential waterfront development area and stick to the downtown district, zoned and used for business, as the state law dictates.
And we can surely expect more accountability, including organizing the mandated Citizens's Advisory Council, submitting to Planning Commission oversight and ordinance compliance for projects, seeking competitive bids and practicing financial responsibility. No more hiding in the shadows for the DDA.
Posted by Elaine at January 23, 2005 06:08 PM