Sun Commercial Reports Vincennes Redevelopment Commission Losing Out on $350,000 per year

From the Vincennes Sun-Commercial:

Members learned a little more Thursday about the additional revenue the Redevelopment Commission could collect should errors with property records and assessments be corrected.

Wayne Thomann with Kemper CPA Group, the RDC’s financial advisor, told the group last month that it isn’t receiving all the property tax money it should be getting. Properties that should be on the Tax Increment Finance Zone inventory aren’t listed while improvements to properties already on the roll haven’t been accounted for.

The bottom line is that the RDC could be missing out on as much as $350,000 a year, which represents about 35 percent of what it currently collects.

Thomann on Thursday presented a detailed list of about 25 properties that the RDC should be collecting money from, including Kohl’s on Bierhaus Boulevard, the Hart Street McDonalds, the Cantwell Marathon Short Stop station on Ford Road, the Evansville Federal Teacher’s Credit Union on Hart Street, and Herman Family Dentistry, the Wabash Valley Eye Center, and Ivy Lane Apartments off Hart Street Road across from Lincoln High School.

If added to the RDC’s list, those properties wouldn’t be paying more property taxes, but a major protion of what is collected from them would go to the commission; a small portion of their tax payments, based on what the properties would be worth without any improvements on them, would continue to be distributed to the city, the Vincennes Community School Corp., the Knox County Public Library, etc.

Currently, all the tax money is going to those entities.

Thomann said he is still working to get an accurate number on exactly how much the RDC should have been collecting. When he does, its members will have a tough decision to make, one many of them have been reluctant to form an opinion on.

RDC will have to decide by July 2014 whether it will begin collecting those missing dollars....

The original TIF zone was set up in 1996 to generate development in what was, at the time, a largely underdeveloped area of the city including, at the time, the Hart Street corridor and the area around Bierhaus Boulevard and Ford Road.

As that area began to generate commerce, the RDC decided to expand the zone to include a large portion of the downtown area. The RDC helped to build the Riverfront Pavilion in 2008 and just last month its members agreed to pay for $1 million in repairs to the Wabash River levee to ensure it remains in good standing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The zone is set to expire in 2026, and at that time, the RDC will cease to collect any more money, the idea being that the zone takes a somewhat barren area, generates commerce and, in the end, leaves a city better off than it was.

 
http://suncommercial.com/articles/2013/03/21/news/local_news/doc514bc0196919d841282772.txt