CARBONDALE (WSIL)---Carbondale city officials want input from their residents about the proposed expansion of TIF #2, which will now include residential neighborhoods in the Arbor District, and two other sections of town.
TIF stands for Tax Increment Financing, but what does that mean?
"A TIF District is a district that has been set aside where the tax revenue, usually the property tax revenue, coming from that district, is the amount that usually goes to the general fund is capped," said SIU's Interim Director of Analytics, Finance & Economics, Kevin Sylwester.
This means, if the TIF district caps tax revenue at $10 million, any money that comes in after that $10 million is invested back into the TIF district for improvement projects.
The city could use the money to redevelop homes, renovate blighted property and restore neighborhoods through infastructure projects.
"The purpose then is to try to build up, try to improve that TIF district by encouraging more businesses to move there because infrastructure will be improved and so forth," said Sylwester.
When a TIF is created, the most recent real estate tax year becomes the “base year� for all property owners.
For example if the property goes up in value from $100,000 to $200,000 the real estate taxes are used for the improvements.
The city hopes to answer residents questions in upcoming public meeting.
"The devil's in the details, right? What do we mean by improve? What types of expenditures is it gonna go for? And so there are gonna be some cases where TIF makes all the sense in the world, but there could be other cases where it's just basically a give away," said Sylwester.
A public meeting will be held June 23rd at 6 pm at the Carbondale Civic Center.
