I spent two
hours Wednesday night at a finance committee meeting of the Fairfield City
Council. My head still hurts.
If you are tired of hearing about the mess that
is the Tax Increment Financing funds in the city…..sit back and have a cold one
on your porch…You can do that now. We aren’t even close to unwinding the chaos
that is TIF.
This all
started when it was revealed that the city improperly inter-mingled the funds of
the two TIF districts. A million dollars was spent to build the infrastructure
of Farrington Farms, a development on the northside of town that has one house.
A million dollars was spent to build the road, sewer and water for that
solitary structure.
It was done
illegally because the two TIF districts do not touch. They can’t borrow money
from each other.
Because of
that single fact, the city will have to
do a forensic accounting of all TIF
monies spent over the last 30 years, hire a surveyor….then ask Senator
Dale Righter to pass a bill into law making it possible for the TIF districts
to touch.
Understand,
there isn’t even a reliable list of the parcels inside of the TIF. Some tax
bills are probably wrong…and have been for three decades.
And in the
background, the school districts, the park district, the library and the
college have an ordinance in hand that says they are owed 40-percent of the
collected TIF funds. They haven’t received a penny this year….and they are not
happy about it.
This was a
slush fund used by city government…no doubt about it.
It can be
fixed. It will take several steps and
lots of legal bills along the way.
….And a
healthy amount of aspirin.
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