The Apalachicola Board of City Commissioners adopted a resolution at their monthly meeting held last night that set the stage for funding economic development within a designated area of the city.
On the recommendation of Jim Bachrach, a member on the City's Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), the commission put into place Tax Increment Financing (TIF) with the passage of Resolution 2014-01.
TIF’s are fiscal tools that allow a designated area within a community to receive property tax revenues that comes from the increases in the assessed value of property within the designated area, but it does not create a new tax.
As the case with Apalachicola, the ‘base’ appraised value of property within the designated district will be “frozen”. Property taxes received on the frozen base value will continue to go to the city, county, school districts and other taxing authorities that normally receive revenue from the properties being taxed. However, taxes received in excess of the frozen base value will flow to the CRA.
The CRA will use the revenues with approval from the city commission to make improvements in the designated area as an incentive to attract private investments and construction that would not otherwise occur.
The CRA boundary include the historic working water front, the downtown commercial district, Battery Park, Franklin, Gorrie and City Squares, the traditional commercial district in the African-American community, the Highway 98 corridor, which include Chestnut Cemetery and the historic Chapman Auditorium.
THE CRA was reactivated soon after the 2007 mayoral election as an initiative of Mayor Van Johnson and has since been instrumental in the construction of the new public restrooms in downtown Apalachicola.
NOTE: Click the above image for a larger view or to obtain a printable copy of the CRA boundary map.
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