Sheldon, Iowa — At their Wednesday meeting, the Sheldon City Council passed the first reading, and sent to a second reading, a resolution dealing with changes to the Urban Renewal Plan. The changes will help make it possible to use Tax Increment Financing for the proposed street improvement projects.
City Manager Sam Kooiker says the TIF funds will be used to pay for street improvements in the city.
(As above) “Urban renewal update was approved unanimously by the council after a hearing, and we have approximately two and a half million dollars in street improvements that we’re looking at all of these streets are located in the urban renewal area.”
Kooiker tells us which streets are involved.
(As above) “The streets are Rainbow Drive from Washington to Oak, Oak from Wansink to North 18th, Pine from North 2nd to North 5th, North 5th from Pine about two thousand feet north of that, South 3rd from 11th to the railroad tracks, and approximately $500,000 for utilities engineering and contingency. So it’s a total of two and a half million dollars that would be paid for from the TIF fund.”
He says, traditionally in Sheldon TIF funds have been limited to use on new projects.
(As above) “The TIF fund has historically been used in Sheldon, at least in recent memory, for new projects and there’s a lot of support for using in these funds for a revitalization of older areas of town”
He says the use of these funds for road work won’t become an annual thing.
(As above) “This isn’t something we’ll be able to do every year, the two and a half million dollars is a one time quote unquote spend down if you will of the TIF funds right now either there isn’t any callable debt, there will be in a few years and then a few years the cumulative TIF funds will be used to pay down that callable debt.”
By utilizing the available TIF funds for the street project, the city can avoid having to borrow money to finance the project.
