The Peoria City Council has approved sharing some of the revenues from the proposed Medina Plains-Allen Road Business Park TIF with Dunlap School District 323.
TIF stands for Tax Increment Financing. A TIF district is defined as a designated area within a city that is deemed “blighted,” economically underdeveloped, and in dire need of governmental assistance and/or intervention. Once a TIF district is established, the city reallocates funds from property taxes to invest into the district in an effort to make it more attractive for potential investors and developers.
“It's incredibly important that we do things like this to move our community forward and create jobs which will drive the tax base, which allows us to provide basic public services,” council member Zach Oyler said about the TIF plan.
With the Medina Plains-Allen Road district, Peoria is hoping to spur industrial development, rather than commercial or residential development. In fact, leaders don’t intend on the district being a space for residential development at all.
Typically, TIF funds work by freezing property tax allocations to the district’s taxing bodies for the number of years the TIF agreement is in place. In the Medina Plains-Allen Road case, the taxing bodies would include the Dunlap School District.
However, the city council has reached an agreement to reimburse the school district the costs that would be incurred by the TIF Project Plan.
“I want to commend councilman (Dennis) Cyr for advocating to do this carve-out. I've been on the council for almost 10 years, (and) I've been advocating since I got on the council that more of our TIFs carve out school districts,” said at-large council member Beth Jensen.
Jensen said the agreement is “very well done.”
“As an attorney who has represented school districts for a number of years, this is a really well thought-out agreement. And it gives the Dunlap school district a number of protections,” she said.
Council members were in agreement this type of resolution works both to spur economic growth, as well as ensure that school districts are still being financially supported in the ways they require.
