Plymouth Redevelopment Commission sets annual TIF pass-through, legislative changes, and revenue uncertainty

The Plymouth Redevelopment Commission met Tuesday evening to tackle its annual determination of how much assessed value from the city's eight Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) districts will be passed through to other local taxing units — a decision that carries new urgency under recently changed state law.

Clerk-Treasurer Lynn Gorski explained that recent legislative changes now require the pass-through determination to be made and submitted to the County Auditor by June 15th. Missing that deadline would trigger an automatic five percent pass-through of the assessed value of each district, making the annual decision more time-sensitive than in past years.

Following the recommendation of the city's financial advisors at Baker Tilly and input from Gorski's, the commission opted to maintain the pass-through at the same level it has held for several years — $15 million in TIF District #1 and no pass-through from the other seven TIF districts.

On a more encouraging note, City Attorney Jeff Houin provided the commission with a progress update on TIF District #8, the Water Street Townhouses development. Houin reported that parking lot striping was completed on Tuesday, that the developer is actively signing leases for the apartment units, and that the development's retail space is expected to open in early June.

However, for the remaining seven TIF districts, Houin struck a more cautious tone, pointing to significant uncertainty surrounding future tax revenues in the wake of Senate Bill 1.

"We are slow rolling some prospects because there is a lot of uncertainty with the future of tax revenues," Houin said. "With SB1, there are a lot of unanswered questions, and some of that will affect TIF areas directly with the changes in personal property taxes. We are trying to be very careful and not over-commit. Some potential projects are coming, so hopefully, in the next few months, we will have some more information and can talk about what the future of some of those TIF areas will look like."