RENEWAL: Big tax bites

Kudos to the Coeur d’Alene Press for the recent editorial (Jan. 12) helping to shed light on the workings of Urban Renewal Districts (URD) and ignitecda.

I was surprised to see on my recent property tax statement that the biggest single line item is under the heading “Urban Renewal.” It’s a whopping 44% of my property tax! Because my residential property happens to be in an URD, this 44% is being skimmed off to a URD via ignitecda — amazing!

With URDs taking such a big bite of the apple, the city (and other Taxing Districts for roads, etc.) are losing a lot of potential revenue, which could be used for their normal operating budget. I’m surprised the city doesn’t have some kind of cap on how much property tax revenue a URD can take. With Coeur d’Alene real estate values going up, the coffers of the URDs must be getting pretty fat.

It’s astounding that so much (44%) of my prop tax is going to this. I thought that in Idaho, taxes were set to be sufficient only to cover the budgets submitted by the various Taxing Districts. I believe all Districts are required to publicly present their proposed budgets in public hearings every year. Do URDs?

I assume that if a URD wasn’t taking this huge portion of my residential property taxes, they’d go toward the other usual Taxing Districts, and everyone’s tax hit could be lower.

ROGER SMITH

Coeur d’Alene