Locate.Utah.Gov Tax Increment Areas

Pete CodellaBroadband

Our locate.utah.gov map has a plethora of great advice for businesses and residents about their area.  With the addition of SURE sites the map has been beefed up to be very comprehensive and intuitive. Now, we have added another important feature, Tax Increment Areas.

The Tax Increment Areas or Tax Increment Financing, is a valuable tool toward economic development, which was it was improtant to include in our locate map.  Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is a tool that can allow municipalities to further promote economic development by tagging property tax revenue that increases in value within a designated district.  TIF benefits an entire municipality due to assessed property values than tend to grow faster within a TIF districts.  The rules and practices for TIFs vary across 48 states.  Designations usually try to find areas that are underdeveloped that need public expenditure to take place in order for better infrastructure.  Four main reasons why a municipality would want to use TIF’s is for redevelopment of below standard or no longer usable buildings, to provide more affordable housing, create more jobs and a new tax base, and to clean-up environmental issues that may plague that area.

TIF’s are a way of earmarking tax revenues for a particular reason, which in our case includes redevelopment agencies (RDA), community development areas (CDA) and economic development areas (EDA).  A redevelopment agency is a government body that is dedicated to urban and community renewal.  It is usually at a municipal city department level that focuses on particular districts that have been unkempt or “blighted.”   These efforts toward RDA’s can focus on reducing crime, destroying unsafe buildings, restoring historic structures and creating new housing and business opportunities.  This helps to expand government services and transportation to those regions.

Community Development Areas are locations where community members come together towards collective action and generate solutions to recurrent problems in a neighborhood.  Community well being ranges from small to large initiatives depending on the range of involvement. These initiatives are put into place to improve the quality of life in the area.  It will furthermore connect social, cultural, environmental and economic matters and create diversity of interests with community.  These experiences are intended to help empower individuals and groups of people to effect economic change within their communities.  EDA’s, Economic Development Areas, are regions selected by local or state authorities to receive assistance from government sponsored economic programs.  These programs could take the form of tax incentives or low-interest loans for local business that expand or locate to these underserved areas.

The boundaries chosen on our map indicate a general area that is under the criteria for TIF’s and successively RDA’s, CDA;s and EDA’s.  It is encouraged to talk with a county or other designated areas for more information.