School Districts in St. Joseph are waiting to take a stance on the village’s proposed TIF district.
The district, which the village hopes to enact by May, would limit the amount of new tax dollars the taxing bodies would receive.
St. Joseph CCSD #!69 Superintendent Lance Landek said the grade school district has yet to take an official stance on the proposed TIF.
However, Landek did appreciate the transparency the village has shown while working with the other taxing bodies.
“I appreciate that the village has been willing to work with the school districts on this matter,” he said.
Under the proposed TIF, the taxing districts will receive all the property taxes that they currently receive from existing residential property.
The property taxes from new residential construction will be divided between the taxing bodies and a TIF Fund. The fund can be used to make improvements within the district by the village.
They can also reimburse businesses or developers with money from the fund. From new residential development the school districts combined will get 45 percent of their tax dollars reimbursed. The remaining taxing bodies will get 1 percent each. What remains will go into the TIF fund.
For new commercial development, all four taxing bodies will receive 1 percent of the new property tax dollars, with 96 percent going back to the TIF fund. Existing commercial will be broken down into 40 percent for the schools and 1 percent for the other taxing bodies with 57 percent remaining for the TIF fund.
Any money the school districts receive from the TIF fund can only be used on capital costs.
St. Joseph-Ogden Superintendent Brian Brooks said that is not ideal.
“I would have less concern with the TIF if we could spend those dollars in future years in whatever ways the District needed to, such as salary and benefits,” Brooks said. “You want to stay competitive in the market with salary and benefits in order to retain good staff and also attract new staff to our school district.”
Brooks said despite recognizing that the village needs residential and commercial growth, the high school district had concerns with the residential part of the TIF because the district would only receive a portion of its local property tax revenue for the life of the TIF, which is 23 years.
“That can be scary for school districts with the variations within state funding over the years,” Brooks said. “On top of that, there are restrictions on what you can spend those dollars on. Because of those things, as a School District, we haven’t really made a definitive decision of whether we fully support the TIF District or not.”
It costs District #169 $9,542 to educate a student for one year at the grade school. The cost per middle school student is $10,667. At the High School, the cost to educate one student is $12,588.
Both districts receive the majority of their funding from property taxes.
At the high school, 53.5 percent of its total revenue came from local property tax dollars.
At the grade school, approximately $3.3 million of their budget came from local property taxes.
Brooks said both districts have asked the village for a more detailed plan on how TIF funds will be spent.
“I felt that was important for us to see in order to be able to fully get behind this with the Village,” Brooks said.
Brooks said the plan would include what St. Joseph would look like at the end of the TIF, what type of new businesses may come into town and how many houses the village is anticipating in a five, ten and 15 year time frame.
“I just feel that it helps people wrap their minds around, and potentially rally around, this TIF District as a community,” he said.
Brooks said he feels a more detailed plan could have prevented some of the negativity that was expressed by residents at the Feb. 11 village board meeting.
“ I have zero doubt that they are trying to do the right things with growth in St. Joe and are not intentionally trying to hide anything,” Brooks said. “I personally have zero concerns at all there, and as stated, have appreciated the conversations as a Superintendent. We have really good people volunteering their time to serve in those positions with the Village representing all of us in St. Joe. Promoting their detailed vision publicly would just help community members who aren’t involved in those conversations and/or don’t know people at the Village personally feel better about the transparency of this process.”
Landek said his district would also like to see a more detailed plan.
“We would also like to have assurances that revenues from the TIF are used towards new development and not to simply upgrade or repair existing infrastructure,” he said.
Both superintendents said their districts would be able to handled more students since all three buildings have space for more students, but funding for additional teachers would be an issue.
“We currently receive 100% of the EAV growth each year from that current farmland,” Brooks said.”Once that land is turned to residential under the TIF, those farmland dollars are frozen for 23 years and the schools would only receive 45% of those increases. That is where the concerns come in over time as those years build. Ideally we could have residential development without a TIF District, and just use a TiF District for the commercial areas.”
Landek agreed.
“If you figure 100 students over 13 grade levels, if they are equally distributed, that is approximately 8 additional students per grade level,” he said. “As we currently have four sections at each grade level in our district, that would be two new students per class. We could handle those numbers with our current teaching staff. However, we all know that the students won’t be equally distributed like that. Our largest class currently has 92 students. If we added eight more students to that grade it would now have class sizes of 25. We would need to start to keep an eye on continued growth as well as projected growth to see when we would need to hire additional staff to add additional sections.”
Landek said he wanted the community to know that both superintendents are looking out for the future of the schools.
“ Many would agree with me when I say the schools are a primary reason they choose to live in our community,” he said. “As a district, we are simply looking out for the future of the schools as well as the future of our community. We want to do what is best for both with as minimal negative consequences as possible to either.”
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