On Monday, March 23, there was a Prescott City Council meeting. During the early public comment
portion of the meeting, a Prescott resident took to the podium to express his concerns about the TID (Tax Increment Districts) approval for District 6 and critiqued the school district tax-break proposal.
“I know from living here, the school district is always in need of money and asking for more money and having referendums every single year to ask for more money for operating costs. I think it’s completely stupid to give this tax break to a developer, you know, giving all that money to them and refunding it to develop this land, and telling them that without this, that land will never be developed. All that land around there has been developed in the last 15 years. It’s only going to be a matter of time before it will turn into something. I’m not against building an apartment building there at all. I mean, if that’s what it’s zoned for, fine. I am against giving them a tax break for it.”
The resident also raised concerns about the sewer plant and public safety building.
“Why don’t we take these to a referendum to let the citizens vote on this kind of stuff? I can probably tell you why. It’s because the vote would probably be No, or there’d be a lot of questions that would come up as to why, or what’s this being spent on, or why is this amount of money being spent on.”
This Prescott resident also shared concerns about transparency between the City of Prescott and Prescott residents.
KDWA connected with Prescott City Administrator Matt Wolfe for insight about the TID approval for District 6 and what that means for Prescott.
“So basically, when somebody makes a TID request, specifically this kind of request, with such a large project, what we do is we have a financial advisor, Ehlers, and where we have the developer submit an application, and we take that application, we bring it to Ehlers, and we have an initial discussion with them, what they think of the project, and what we think of the project, and if it should continue forward, we sit down with council in a closed session to discuss negotiations on terms of the development agreements if we wanted to move forward. And then ultimately, what we do is we, if we do want to move forward, we have Ehlers, have the developer submit their pro forma, which is basically their kind of sources and uses, and where all the projects and all the project details, and they sit down and review it and see if it’s something that is actually needed for rate of return, for the developer to make the funds necessary for them to do the development. In this case, we ultimately went that route, and others came back with the finding that the project was deemed one that could go forward with tax increment finding if the city so chooses to use it.”
City Administrator Matt Wolfe continues, “I do also want to add that separate from that, I mean, this project is a $15 million central investment in the City of Prescott. There’s, obviously in an ideal situation we would never have to use economic development incentives, like a tax increment financing (TIF) to make these projects happen. But the reality is that’s more and more what’s happening with communities, as you see these bigger projects across the region. Really, and there are, you know, benefits in terms of, you know, we have a large business park. We have current businesses that have a decent amount of employees, and we have another 150 acres that we’re trying to develop for businesses. And we haven’t had a new multifamily development the City of Prescott since 2004, if you don’t count the one across the street that’s specifically meant for seniors. And if you couple that with the fact that our school district, ultimately, unfortunately, is losing students and we’re seeing a decline in enrollment. You know, one of the sources and benefits the community is looking for growth, and where does that growth come from? So I think there’s some definitely benefits that, you know, weren’t brought up last night or somewhat addressed, I should say. But and then, of course, they would be in the tax increment district for about 16 – 18 years after that, and those funds would go to the general fund and all the taxing jurisdictions. Which, again, (without) tax increment financing, this project wouldn’t happen.”
City administrator Wolfe addresses the claim about lack of communicative transparency from the city.
“Pretty much every single piece of any item that’s on the agenda, we develop a full memo that’s full of attachments. I think this, the tax increment district extension amendments has been on both the Planning Commission and council for discussion, and that there’s been a very detailed memo breaking down exactly what the city’s looking at in terms of terms exactly what the city has been discussing. (The resident) went on to say some other things regarding, you know, the public safety building and the sewer treatment plant, all those things have been discussed again, have been in the works for years at various meetings.”
“I think ultimately, you know, when we put together these memos, we’re trying to make sure the public stays is informed. They’re meant for council, but also for the community. When they look at these things, they can get the opportunity to read them, to see, why is the city even considering this? Why is this being something looked into? You know, everything that we’re trying to do has some sort of rhyme or reason behind it, and that’s what we’re trying to figure out. You know, in this giant puzzle of everything that we’re got going on in the how do we get it all to fit and work together?”
KDWA will have more about the Prescott City Council meeting in future reports.
To listen to the full broadcast, click the soundbite.