Photo provided A map of the TIF changes for Columbus.
City officials are moving forward with changes to Columbus’s largest Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district.
The Columbus Redevelopment Commission has approved a confirmatory resolution on changes to the Central TIF.
A TIF district is a mechanism that allows the redevelopment commission to siphon off increasing property taxes in a selected area to fund projects intended to benefit the community.
According to Redevelopment Director Heather Pope, the changes include reabsorbing the Cummins and Cole TIFs back into the Central TIF, as the redevelopment commission recently finished paying off bonds from projects that were tied to these areas.
The Central TIF will also expand to include additional land that is zoned for commercial or industrial use, including certain properties along the State Street corridor, in the old Bartholomew County industrial park, near the AMC Theater, near Woodside and Walesboro and in northeast Columbus.
The changes also include removing certain parcels near Tipton Lakes Boulevard from the Central TIF.
Pope explained at a previous meeting that this land was zoned industrial when the TIF districts were first created in 2005. However, the area has changed since that time and now features uses that do not contribute to the TIF, such as a church and a parcel owned by the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp., which is considering building a new elementary school at the site.
The process of amending the Central TIF started with the redevelopment commission approving a declaratory resolution in July, Pope said. The matter then went to the Columbus Plan Commission and Columbus City Council, which both granted approval. The confirmatory resolution is the final step of the process.
“From there we have about 30 days in which to notify the county auditor of our changes, along with notification to the Department of Local Government and Finance,” she told city council earlier this month.
