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Event transcript
All right, today is August 28th, 2024. The time is 6:00 PM. 00:00:01
It's OK. 00:00:12
All right. 00:00:21
Is that working? 00:00:23
Today is August 28th, 2024. The time is 6:00 PM. It's Wednesday and we are going to start our Redevelopment Agency board meeting. 00:00:26
We're going to start out with an invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance by Council Member Cameron. 00:00:33
Our dear Father in heaven, they come before that this evening to ask what I spirit to be with us as we hold this meeting and pray 00:00:46
that they'll help us to be mindful of. 00:00:51
The needs of the citizens and that will be considerate of each other and that will work together. 00:00:58
For the best of this community, we love thee and are grateful for all the blessings and abundance that surround us. And we say 00:01:04
these things in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen. 00:01:09
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, 00:01:19
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 00:01:26
All right, we'll move on to our consent agenda. I need a motion. 00:01:35
I move to approve consent items as presented. OK, we have a first by Amber. Can I get a second? 00:01:42
Second Second by Sarah. Any discussion? 00:01:48
All in favor, aye? 00:01:52
All right, that brings us to 3.1, our RDA update and our RDA Director, Josh Daniels will give us an update on the RDA. Good 00:01:55
evening, council members. Well, board members, we have the. 00:02:03
Yeah, thanks. 00:02:15
So I just have been doing some financial research that I think will help to answer some questions that have been raised over the 00:02:20
course of several weeks. And then also if there are additional questions we could maybe start a few minutes. I could you know 00:02:27
spend a few minutes responding to them. Let me pull up that our presentation here. 00:02:34
It's just taking a little bit of time. 00:02:56
There we go. 00:03:12
OK. So a couple of points. First of all, since the beginning of the use of increment within the project area of the RDA, which 00:03:19
phases were first triggered in 2017, the cumulative total increment revenue that's been collected? 00:03:30
And paid to the RDA. 00:03:42
Is just over. It's, you know, 76 and a half million. 00:03:45
The bulk of that is spent on a reimbursement basis. 00:03:50
To those contractors and developers that are doing work in the project area on environmental remediation as well as. 00:03:55
City infrastructure, roads and, and get curb and gutter and sewer and some of those sorts of things. That's that's really where 00:04:05
the bulk of those dollars are spent and it's really where the bulk of the dollars will be spent over the lifetime. 00:04:11
Of of the existence of the project area for the RDA. 00:04:18
Now a question has kind of come up about the fiscal impact on the Alpine School District. So I just wanted to review the theory of 00:04:24
why the school districts around the state will agree to participate in increment, which is to essentially give up revenue for a 00:04:32
period of time. And it's because you're talking about land that is not valuable. 00:04:40
But that if this investment is made, then the land will become more valuable and then in the long run, the school district will 00:04:49
actually receive more total tax revenue over time. 00:04:54
And so I've got some data I want to share with you that'll kind of show that. But just as a summation point, to date, the Alpine 00:04:59
School District's share of that 76,000,000 is 39, just under 40 million. So it's about 52% of the revenue. 00:05:07
Comes from the Alpine School District's share, which makes sense. Alpine School District makes up, you know, 50%, actually a 00:05:17
little more of all tax revenues collected. You know, when people pay property tax. 00:05:23
Over 50% is going to the school district. That's the largest user of property tax revenues. The city's share is 2020 million. 00:05:30
And again, that's over the course of time since 2017, cumulative. 00:05:39
I think there's been some misunderstanding about the payment of property taxes. All properties in the city, in the RDA, in the 00:05:45
project area, all properties are being assessed property taxes at the current property tax rates that everybody has to pay. So no 00:05:53
land owner is given any kind of special treatment. 00:06:02
You know, unless they have, you know, some sort of an exemption, which there are certain things, certain property owners might 00:06:12
have certain exemptions, of course there's like Greenbelt and and those kinds of things, but outside of those normal. 00:06:18
Programs all land owners, including the developers that own. 00:06:25
You know, a good chunk of the project area they are paying property taxes on all those properties that they own and at those 00:06:30
current rates. And so the property tax revenue that is then collected a share of that property tax is then potentially rebated 00:06:38
back in the case of let's say a developer doing work on a reimbursement basis as they are spending money to build infrastructure. 00:06:46
But then you know those that 75% share, that's the increment. 00:06:55
That goes to the RDA and the RDA then pays that out on a reimbursement basis. Another important principle that I think sometimes 00:07:00
isn't well understood is that in Utah generally and specifically in the case of the Geneva project area and and this RDA, all of 00:07:08
the agreements to to spend tax increment financing funds are post performance. There are other states where economic development 00:07:15
and tax increment financing might be. 00:07:23
Used in some sort of a subsidization basis to incentivize things. That's not really the approach that we've taken. The approach 00:07:30
that we take is post performance. So it's not really an incentive. I mean, it does incent people to do things, but people are only 00:07:38
paid once they've actually created something and done their end of the bargain in this case, you know, perform certain 00:07:45
environmental cleanup projects that they've expended funds to do. 00:07:52
Or actually built certain infrastructure projects that they then get reimbursed for after the fact. So why that's important is the 00:08:00
city wins because the city gets the infrastructure 1st and the developer in a sense is acting like a like an investor or a 00:08:08
bondholder or, but but they're taking the risk. 00:08:17
And so they're fronting the city. A street. 00:08:27
In the hopes that the city will then collect sales tax or property tax revenue through the increment that's sufficient to pay them 00:08:31
back. And so they're taking risk with their dollars today to build infrastructure and they're on the hook essentially to finance 00:08:37
it. And then they get reimbursed once they've once they've done the performance. Now that's a really great model because the city 00:08:43
doesn't have a whole lot of risk in that environment. And you get streets and other kinds of infrastructure and the environmental 00:08:49
cleanup up front. 00:08:55
Rather than maybe a traditional model where you have to bond for something, get the money, then go out and build the road. And 00:09:02
you're not going to be able to bond if you're not able to demonstrate certain revenues in that moment as you're trying to qualify 00:09:09
or, or yeah, basically qualify for that bond and, and so this particular. 00:09:17
Feature that we're as a city able to utilize is a is a great advantage because. 00:09:26
You're able to build a lot of infrastructure quickly and therefore able to build out the city fairly quickly with, you know, 00:09:32
housing and and other kinds of projects. So any questions before I jump into the next charter graph about any of those points? 00:09:39
Yeah, I have a question. So we met with Jason Kirk, was he there? And he mentioned that the Forge, we did a lot of the 00:09:45
infrastructure first. 00:09:52
Thinking that they were going to go ahead. And so is that different than a TIF fund? Like why did we do that? 00:09:59
And they haven't done anything with the land yet. 00:10:05
So you're saying this the city spent money to build the infrastructure? Yeah. I mean, that's in that scenario. I wasn't around at 00:10:08
the time, you know why that was maybe the idea. But I mean, you could do that, right? You could build infrastructure in hopes that 00:10:15
it would attract development. Maybe. I don't know if the mayor has more insight as to why. Yeah. So the roads that were put in 00:10:23
served both sites. So it was infrastructure to service the whole area. 00:10:30
The idea was that they were going to come in and build and the yard was going to come in and build. So I believe there's a lift 00:10:38
station, mill roads and things like that. That equals about $4 million in total. I think there was about 600,000 specific to that 00:10:44
site, but it was to service the whole area. And so we've seen growth on one side and then on the other side is not yet performed, 00:10:51
but that's why it is. It's a similar thing that happened in the yard where we put in the cleanup or the. 00:10:58
Water infrastructure so that they could build on the site. 00:11:06
And rarely do we do upfront funding, it's usually a very small amount, but this one in particular was to service the entire area. 00:11:09
So. 00:11:14
OK, any other snow? 00:11:23
All right here. 00:11:26
OK, so. 00:11:29
Here's a chart that will show why. 00:11:31
The investment in the utilization of increment financing to help development, why that might make sense and what probably what the 00:11:36
school district was thinking when they chose to participate, you know, voting to participate 15 years ago. So here you have two 00:11:45
lines going all the way back to when the project area, just slightly before the project area was first designated. 00:11:54
And the the RDA was created and the increment financing was approved, which are activities that took place between 2009 and 2014. 00:12:04
And so the real work of actually doing the environmental remediation and working on development and the creation of infrastructure 00:12:14
began in earnest after 2014. And So what this chart shows is it shows the value of all property within. 00:12:24
The project area of the RDA in blue. 00:12:34
And it shows the value of all other property in the city of Vineyard that is not within the project area. And the thing that's 00:12:37
interesting to look at in the chart is the differences in the slope of the line, which is the rate of increase of the value of the 00:12:44
land. 00:12:52
And So what you see is that once the investment in the development, environmental cleanup and infrastructure of the area. 00:13:00
The project area begins, you see a real significant increase in the value of that land. 00:13:09
Versus the value of the other land that's not in the project area and so. 00:13:19
What that's showing you is that the the net effect of the upfront and well, not up front, but well, it's upfront investment on the 00:13:25
part of developers. But the net effect of that upfront development for them, which they're incentivized to do because there's a 00:13:33
reimbursement agreement that they have increases the value of the land faster than land that is not, that is not undergoing that 00:13:40
same type of investment. Now granted some of the areas in the red are sort of already built out. 00:13:48
So you're just looking at maybe appreciation versus land that's fallow that's being built on, right. So that also makes sense as 00:13:55
to why there would be a steeper line in the faster growth. But because of that, so the question is how fast can we make land that 00:14:04
is blighted and like the former Geneva site, how fast can we make that land more valuable for the purpose of tax revenue? 00:14:13
That's what the school district is wondering. 00:14:23
Because and that's what every tax entity is wondering is they're saying, well, if nothing happens on this property, it will remain 00:14:25
not so valuable and we will not receive very much tax revenue. But if we can invest in making, you know, developing this land, 00:14:33
increasing its taxable value quickly, we will get more property tax revenue both in the near term and over the long term. And that 00:14:40
is the reason that taxing entities choose to participate in giving up some of their property tax revenues. 00:14:48
For a period of time so that it can accelerate the development of that land, that blighted land, and, and then they can have that 00:14:55
that pay off, which is that they'll receive tax revenues quickly that they wouldn't have otherwise received. And over the long 00:15:03
term, they'll also receive more revenue and, and on a faster timeline. So now to actually look at that, I've got this other chart 00:15:10
and these are the two main charts I wanted to show before. 00:15:18
Any questions about this? 00:15:26
OK. So now this is just using the school district as an example. You could also look at Vineyard if you wanted as well. But since 00:15:30
they're the biggest and they're the ones that have come up in conversation, I'm using them as an example. So this is the revenue, 00:15:36
the tax revenue to Alpine School District that is collected from within the project area. So those are those are properties that 00:15:42
might be subject to the tax increment financing, which means a portion of those revenues are going to the RDA and not to the 00:15:47
school district. 00:15:53
And that's versus those non RDA properties in Vineyard. So here's an important thing to think about. If we go back to 2009, we see 00:16:00
that the total amount of annual property tax revenue that's collected, that's what this is. This is annual property tax revenue. 00:16:09
This is the actual revenue that Alpine School District actually receives. 00:16:18
Including the haircut that happens when. 00:16:27
When tax revenues are sent to the RDA and not to the school district, that's the increment revenue. So if you go back to 2009, you 00:16:30
can see there's it's pretty close between the project area tax revenue and the rest of Vineyard. 00:16:37
But then if you look to the very last line, the blue line at the very end in 2024, so these are RDA properties. You can see that 00:16:46
Alpine School District today is receiving more revenue from just the RDA properties where they're only receiving 25% of the 00:16:56
revenue they're so they're 25% is more than they were receiving from both all of Vineyard and. 00:17:05
Project area combined in 2009. 00:17:15
And so and so that, so if you follow the blue line, you notice that it goes up because that's appreciation and property values 00:17:18
that's happening plus some development because there were neighborhoods being built in Vineyard that were built within the project 00:17:24
area. And so that's contributing to the increase in the blue line until you hit 2016. And then what happens is after 2016 when you 00:17:31
get to year 2017. 00:17:38
Some of the first phases. The first 3 phases of the. 00:17:45
Were triggered meaning that 75% of the property tax revenue that would have gone to the school district now goes to the RDA 00:17:49
instead So you see a drop in the revenue that's expected but then what happens is the school district is now only receiving 25% of 00:17:56
the revenue they would have received previously and that 25% share increases over time as the whole project area is being 00:18:04
developed and so. 00:18:11
This, this is exactly why school districts will participate is they know that while they'll take a haircut in the short term, 00:18:19
they'll be back to where they were before and far beyond that. And so that's kind of what this, what this chart shows. And in, in 00:18:27
both cases, you can see the blue line is pretty steep in in the beginning, which shows the value of just building neighborhoods. 00:18:34
But you also another reason those lines are steep is you're coming out of a recession. 00:18:41
At that time as well, so property values were going up more than they might otherwise go up just naturally. So I know it's kind of 00:18:49
complicated. There's a lot of moving parts on this chart. It represents a whole lot of data, but I tried to simplify it so that 00:18:56
you can kind of see some comparisons. So any, any questions about that? 00:19:03
It's OK, you can kind of Stew on it if you want, but. 00:19:18
I don't think we have questions. It's good, OK. 00:19:21
OK, let me think here. I think there was one other. 00:19:27
One other thing, no, I was going to maybe revisit the taxing entity question that we discussed in a previous meeting, but we 00:19:32
really did I think hammer that issue pretty well, which is that the taxing entity committee exists kind of as needed one off. It's 00:19:39
not a continuing entity. It exists for the purpose of bringing together these participating taxing entities like the school 00:19:46
districts to approve their participation initially in opting into the the tax. 00:19:54
Increment so. 00:20:01
OK. Thank you all. 00:20:05
And thank you, all right, Honestly really appreciate it. 00:20:08
I would just say that I mean, in the most not kindest terms, I think this is a manipulation of data and I don't think it 00:20:16
represents. I mean, obviously if I were to, we need to be very clear with our words that. 00:20:23
When we say that they pay taxes, they pay taxes, but then it's remitted back to them in January, right? 00:20:31
So it's a kind of a play on words, no? So they pay taxes. So like like using the example of a developer, right, Right. So if you 00:20:40
have a developer in the project area that owns property, they're paying all the property taxes that they would, that any property 00:20:47
owner would normally pay based on the value of the land, which the value of a lot of the land that is still undergoing 00:20:54
environmental remediation is quite low. And I believe it actually qualifies essentially for the. 00:21:02
Type of treatment as a Greenbelt, but. 00:21:09
Nonetheless, they pay those taxes. 00:21:12
Then what happens is not in January, but at the at whatever time is appropriate based on invoicing and based on contract, you 00:21:15
know, contractual agreements, the RDA pays them per a separate contract that has nothing to do with, you know, what they paid in 00:21:21
taxes. It's like they have a specific contract. If they do this project or that project that they're working on, this or that, 00:21:27
then they're reimbursed. 00:21:34
A certain amount of money per the contract. 00:21:41
What I'm saying though, is how amazing it would be if, let's say, my landscaping wasn't done because it's done now. 00:21:44
And I paid taxes like a normal person and then I had a blighted area and it's like I got that back because then therefore it would 00:21:52
improve the value of my property. That's what we're doing right, is it's a special area where only 50% of the properties are 00:21:58
getting that and we're hoping that it will increase in value. 00:22:04
And I get it, we're not going to convince each other tonight on where we stand, but I just think it's incredible to look at how 00:22:13
data can be used to show one thing and the exact same data can show the other. And so I don't want to belabor the point tonight, 00:22:20
but I do think that if we're giving one side of the argument a voice to do it, I think that those specialists that are of the 00:22:27
other voice should be have the ability to come on the agenda and. 00:22:35
Teach the other side of things and Josh, do you see another side of things that you would feel comfortable? I guess I'm not 00:22:42
understanding completely what what your goals are with me. Well, I mean, we're coming to do the same exact presentation to kind of 00:22:50
belabor the point and it's like I think if we're trying to sell us on. 00:22:57
Locking everybody into the what, 2011 tax rate and allowing them to do that and then saying, but they're really not getting it 00:23:07
back, but they're getting it back in a different way. I mean, they are, it's just kind of a play on words. And I mean that in the 00:23:14
nicest way, but it's just everyone went through the tax comparison to see that it it's not functioning like we're not getting. 00:23:21
You know what, the 70 million that we've pushed back, I don't think we've gotten the 70 million back. 00:23:29
And we're hoping in the future it would be that it hasn't come to fruition yet, right? But you didn't in total revenue. But what's 00:23:36
your, I guess, so you're saying that you're worried that this is like a small pitch, right? And so which is great. I mean, we all 00:23:43
want the RDA to be successful, right? Well, for me, I'm looking at numbers. And so I don't, I don't necessarily feel it's a sales 00:23:49
pitch as much as trying to understand how the RDA works. And so I guess. 00:23:56
I think more importantly, it would be good at some point. 00:24:03
To I would really like to understand your concerns and what your goals are with your concerns. There are there are professionals 00:24:07
that have sat down with us. Well, I mean, I have a lot of faith in our RDA director. I mean, he has a really impressive resume. 00:24:13
Yeah. May I just interrupt and say I can't speak through this at the council, but I don't believe you've been manipulative. I 00:24:18
appreciate you bringing the data. No, I'm not done. 00:24:24
And correct me if I'm wrong is that. 00:25:00
We are just providing the algorithm or the calculation by how? 00:25:03
We provide taxation with the RDA. It's not a opinion. It is just a calculation and it's done according to the RDA laws that are in 00:25:09
place. And that's what we are discussing. And so I think we can find clarity in it. We can post it, we can send you guys all of 00:25:18
that information. But let's go ahead and move on to the next point. I would just marry the two comments, right? So you have. 00:25:27
39 million. 00:25:37
That didn't go to schools. And then you have the 20 million that that came in, right? So you have a total of 60 million. In your 00:25:39
last meeting, Josh, you showed that, hey, the property of X Mission went from what was it 8 to 6000 to 46,000 or something like 00:25:46
that. I mean, so it's like, hey, we saw 30,000% increase in property value. And it's like, right, That 36,000 is much smaller than 00:25:53
the 40 million right now. That's only one year. 00:26:00
But still, that's a small increment for. 00:26:07
Will it actually pay back? And so I just think modeling, and I'm not saying Josh is manipulating the numbers in a, you can 00:26:10
manipulate data to look at different things to, to show out different things. I think everyone knows that. And I just wanted to 00:26:16
point that out that I think it's important that the RDA get second and third opinions and we do, we actually work with financial 00:26:22
advisors that look at all of these numbers and. 00:26:28
They're very well known in the state and I think we've presented data that is very clear tonight, so. 00:26:35
Jess, if you don't have anything else, is that the end of your update? Yeah, OK. I'm adjourning this meeting and we'll move on to 00:26:42
our next meeting in about 10 minutes. 00:26:45