EDITORIAL: Urban renewal: District closures open big doors
Pop quiz.
Q: Which city was the first in Idaho to close an urban renewal district?
A: Post Falls, with the Riverbend district closing a full decade ago.
Post Falls was recently in the news for closing its fifth urban renewal district. The Expo district has grown to an estimated $63.4 million in new construction market value while adding hundreds of good jobs.
“The City supports urban renewal districts as they promote creation of public infrastructure and higher wage jobs,” Mayor Ron Jacobson told The Press in a statement. “Our staff strive to encourage thoughtful business development and infrastructure enhancement within the districts while still closing them in the approved time frame and even early when possible.”
In addition to the jobs Expo helped deliver, its creation will generate an estimated $350,000 in property tax revenue to taxing districts in the next fiscal year budget. That $350,000 not only provides important resources to taxing district administrators, but it helps ease the tax burden on individual property owners within the district.
Coeur d’Alene closed its large Lake District at the end of 2021, a 20-year project. All those years, the additional tax revenue generated by increasing development went to the city’s urban renewal agency, ignite cda.
In its final year it sent a whopping $5.3 million to ignite. City officials aren’t sure exactly how much will actually go to taxing districts in the coming fiscal year, but it will likely be more than $3 million.
Urban renewal has persevered as an effective Idaho economic development tool since 1988, yet it comes under fire from critics constantly. Rightfully, its methods should be intensely scrutinized, but its rewards should not be ignored.
When you’re first starting off in the workaday world, it’s painful to invest for that far-away day when retirement arrives. But that day will arrive, and if you had the discipline to invest and let interest build, you’re going to be very happy you made those sacrifices along the way.
That’s the bottom line with urban renewal. As local urban renewal districts close, the “interest” that’s built up over the years starts flowing indirectly back to the taxpayers, helping pay for the institutions and services they rely upon.
With Expo’s closure there are still 15 urban renewal districts in Kootenai County, according to the Idaho State Tax Commission’s urban renewal registry. Scrutinize them all to your heart’s content at https://tax.idaho.gov/i-2007.cfm and give yourself a pat on the back for becoming more familiar with this often misunderstood subject.
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Want extra credit? You can read Alan S. Dornfest’s thorough explanation of tax increment financing — the device used by urban renewal agencies — at: https://bit.ly/3AckNsu