From the Muncie Star-Press:
Is $2 million a year worth a little internal strife among Delaware County officials?
When the county is struggling to figure out how to keep paying the bills, you bet.
That’s why it wasn’t really a surprise when, during a recent meeting of the Delaware County EDIT (Economic Development Income Tax) Board, a couple of county council members made a bid for a little piece of the pie.
The EDIT board, comprised of a handful of members of the community and the three county commissioners, met to formulate the next three-year EDIT spending plan. The commissioners suggested millions of dollars worth of projects for the county and a handful of area towns, and acknowledged they’ll have to cut their wish list way back before the line-up is finalized.
Even though EDIT can’t cover everything on the county’s list, the amount of local EDIT revenue is nothing to sneeze at. The county’s share — minus lesser amounts that go to most local towns — adds up to $179,000 a month, more than $2 million a year.
Part of that is divided among several local towns thanks to an agreement — established about two decades ago when EDIT was created locally — that let the county and those towns who were willing to share the income. The city of Muncie and the town of Gaston decided to go their own way and their EDIT revenue goes solely to them.
The county and towns, including Yorktown and Daleville, pool their EDIT revenue and share the cost of issuing bonds to finance products.
So along with potential items like $900,000 over three years for space for economic development projects and $900,000 to finance an already-completed project — the new grandstands at the Delaware County Fairgrounds — there’s such potential spending as $500,000 for Yorktown to improve its downtown.
...
See the full article here:
http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013303240074
