Redevelopment Agency Board Meeting
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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 |