01-15-2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Item #: 5C Meeting Date: January 15, 2016 Type of Business: EDC City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Economic Development Commission From: Brian Beeman, Business Development Coordinator Item Title/Subject: Review Public Financing Policy & Application Introduction: As staff was reviewing fee schedules and policies for 2016 in relation to Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and Tax Abatements, it became apparent that the TIF, and Tax Abatement policies were outdated and in need of attention. As a result, staff has reviewed each financial incentive policy and is providing a proposed draft to be reviewed by the EDC for further consideration by the EDA. Discussion: The City of Mounds View’s Tax Abatement Policy was last updated September 22, 2003. The city’s TIF Policy was last updated June 12, 2000. As staff was reviewing the policies, it became apparent that some of the language in the policies is in need of updating due to statutory changes and to clarify language that often causes confusion in agreements. Ehler’s, the city’s financial consultant and Kennedy & Graven, the city’s legal consultant, have both reviewed and recommended that the TIF & Abatement policies be combined. The updated version seeks to clarify and bring the policy up-to-date with current statutes and has also included language from the many current city policies they use on a daily basis. Below is a summary of the changes. The proposed draft policy is now entitled, “Mounds View EDA Public Financing Policy”. The combined policy proposes the following:  Combines the purposes, objectives, and policies from the previous abateme nt and TIF policies. These were very similar, so all of those policy ideas are represented in the combined policy.  The TIF policy had square footage, tax a nd valuation minimums listed. We removed this concept because any project that meets all of the policy criteria will need to at least meet those thresholds anyway. The old policy had evaluation criteria that assigned points for these things. Excluding this simplifies the policy.