The Manitowoc Joint TIF Review Board yesterday unanimously approved a $780 thousand donor allocation from TIF 15 (The Harbor Town District) to TIF 14 (an older downtown district over in the Maritime Museum area).
Mayor Justin Nickels says the vote was 4 to nothing with one member absent.
TIF, or Tax Incremental Financing District, is a public financing method that is used as a subsidy for redevelopment—infrastructure and other community-improvement projects that typically divert future property tax revenue increases from those entities. The subsidies—however—are not appropriated directly from a city’s budget and the city incurs loss through foregone tax revenue. Nickels admits TIF’S can be a bit “dicey” with their high-risk-high reward nature.
In 2009 Manitowoc’s TIF Districts were nearly $20 million in debt. Nine years later the Mayor says that debt is $3.52 million and no TIF has a deficit in it.
Translated—the remaining debt has sufficient revenues to pay off those debts over the next few years. Both TIF 14 and 15 will close by December 31st 2019.