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<br />Item #: 1 <br />Meeting Date: February 1, 2016 <br />Type of Business: Council Work session <br /> <br />City of Mounds View Staff Report <br />To: Economic Development Commission <br />From: Brian Beeman, Business Development Coordinator <br />Item Title/Subject: Review Public Financing Policy & Application <br /> <br /> <br />Introduction: <br /> <br />As staff was reviewing fee schedules and policies for 2016 in relation to Tax Increment <br />Financing (TIF) and Tax Abatements, it became apparent that the TIF, and Tax <br />Abatement policies were outdated and in need of attention. As a result, staff and the <br />EDC has reviewed the combined TIF & Tax Abatement Policy now called, “The City of <br />Mounds View Economic Development Authority Public Finance Policy & Application and <br />is providing a proposed draft to be reviewed by the Council for further consideration. <br /> <br />Discussion: <br /> <br />The City of Mounds View’s Tax Abatement Policy was last updated September 22, <br />2003. The city’s TIF Policy was last updated June 12, 2000. As staff was reviewing the <br />policies, it became apparent that some of the language in the policies is in need of <br />updating due to statutory changes and to clarify language that often causes confusion in <br />agreements. <br /> <br />Ehler’s, the city’s financial consultant and Kennedy & Graven, the city’s legal consultant, <br />have both reviewed and recommended that the TIF & Abatement policies be combined. <br />The updated version seeks to clarify and bring the policy up-to-date with current <br />statutes and has also included language from the many current city policies they use on <br />a daily basis. Below is a summary of the changes. The proposed draft policy is now <br />entitled, “The City of Mounds View EDA Public Financing Policy & Application”. The <br />combined policy proposes the following: <br /> <br /> Combines the purposes, objectives, and policies from the previous abatement <br />and TIF policies. These were very similar, so all of those policy ideas are <br />represented in the combined policy. <br /> <br /> The TIF policy had square footage, tax and valuation minimums listed. We <br />removed this concept because any project that meets all of the policy criteria will <br />need to at least meet those thresholds anyway. The old policy had evaluation <br />criteria that assigned points for these things. Excluding this simplifies the policy.