Counterpoint: Edina residents, concerned about tax-increment financing? Why, yes!

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Edina Mayor James Hovland’s response to an Aug. 17 Minnesota Star Tribune article on the use of tax-increment financing in Edina (“When does Edina consider using TIF?” Aug. 23) was essentially a defense of the increasing frequency and size of the concessions made to developers. What was overlooked in the response is the reason the reporter wrote the article:

Many Edina residents question the ongoing use of TIF, and the way it is used.

TIF will pay for the developer’s own project expenses, such as demolition costs for current structures, extending sewer and water lines to supply their new tenant spaces, creating new streets to interconnect their buildings, and building new parking spaces for their tenants and customers. Funding of public sidewalks, plantings or art primarily benefits new tenants and does not provide transformational change of the type found at Centennial Lakes Park.

Use of TIF places an immediate tax burden on current residents who will not see any new influx of monies from the project into the city’s budget coffers for 20 to 25 years. More people demand the need for more services. The use of TIF will place the responsibility for all expenses onto the city’s tab for hiring additional police or for building new fire stations, to name but a couple things that come with aggressive densification.

TIF delays critical new property tax support for the public schools. Students entering kindergarten today will graduate high school before benefiting from potential new revenue from this development.

In short, TIF districts starve the city’s current usable tax revenues, essential for a city whose budget has grown over 10% in each of the last two years. The city’s current budget, relative to the population, has been rising far faster than the rate of inflation.

Yes — it is a fact that many residents are questioning the current direction the use of TIF is taking. Why, indeed, would we want to provide tax incentives to redevelop what the mayor described “as some of the best real estate in town?” The recent sales tax measure to renovate the aging Braemar Arena suggests Edina has its own share of serious budgetary needs. Instead, we must diligently consider first the budgetary implications and vetting of the merits of the project well before zoning changes are considered or tax incentives are discussed.

The issue is not whether TIF should be used for transformational public benefit but whether the city has shifted to prioritizing subsidies for developers over its fiduciary duty to use those tax dollars to provide a working city budget for residents.

Ron Anderson is a former Edina City Council member and current Edina mayoral candidate.