Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness is developing a document on the fiscal impact of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and revealed the first draft to the City Council Finance Committee on Jan. 10. The mayor hired Policy Analytics, a research and analysis firm located in downtown Indianapolis, to crunch the numbers.
Here are a few of the findings contained in that report:
- TIF districts generate $576,000 per year for the Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School District because property tax increases authorized by referendum are collected within a TIF district.
- Fishers TIF districts impact five-tenths of one percent (0.5%) of the HSE School District budget annually, because 80 to 90 percent of the HSE annual budget is provided by the state, not local property taxes, as a result of the 2008 property tax reform legislation enacted by the General Assembly.
- TIF districts have generated $47 million in public infrastructure projects, such as sewers, roads, storm water work and public parking garages.
- TIF districts in Fishers have generated 5,200 new jobs within the city.
- TIF districts in Fishers have resulted in $380 million in private sector development.
Fadness
The report provides numbers on how tax rolls would have been impacted had the development come without the TIF incentives. For example, HSE Schools would have received $1.1 million annually more if all the development had happened without TIF.
Finance Committee members John Weingardt and Eric Moeller, along with Mayor Fadness, said at the Finance Committee meeting that the development would not have happened without TIF.
Weingardt said he “100 percent believes” none of this development would have happened in Fishers without the TIF incentive.
Fadness said there was no development like this for 20 years and did not begin to happen until TIF incentives were used.
When the city’s growth years are over, Fadness says a future mayor will have a billion dollars in new assessed valuation of property to cushion the end of massive growth when the TIFs begin to expire.
Tax Increment Financing is a complex system that generally allows property taxes generated by the underlying property to be used for paying off debt to build part or all of the property.
The City Council Finance Committee will present these findings to the full council, possibly in February, for consideration of a resolution. Fadness plans to present a resolution to the HSE School Board. Both resolutions are not to agree or disagree with the city’s use of TIFs, Fadness says, but would serve to provide a statement that the numbers presented are correct.