I live in Bonner County in the Westside Fire District. The City of Dover is receives fire protection service from Westside. Dover is very well off financially and has just recently agreed to release the remaining surplus funds back to the service agencies, which is great. I just learned of this in about two months ago because I attend Fire District meetings.
The reality of this situation is that residents of the district outside of the development area were subsidizing fire protection for the redevelopment area.
Correct, I believe that is why The URA had to relinquish funds back to the Fire District that were not either budgeted or encumbered. HB208 rewrote the law on consolidating fire districts. Section 2 is difficult for me to interpret. It appears to suggest that a fire district can levy a tax on property in the district of twenty-four hundredths percent (.24%) without going to a vote. I hope this is not the case, but it is vague.
URD's are an important mechanism to rehabilitate degraded areas or to encourage commercial/industrial growth into specific zones. Like anything it can be mismanaged or poorly utilized. However, poor management of one shouldn't cast a cloud on the whole mechanism There are those in the legislature ( specically Moyle) who are against URD's but will support every kind of break imaginable for corporate interests particularly real estate developers. I believe the ITD site was stopped by Moyle primarily because it was in an URD.While the state code does allow and regulate URD's the legislature should let the cities decide on the specifics for their community. Boise has had URD's for decades. CCDC was very poorly run early on and almost disbanded. Former Mayor Bieter turned that around and downtown URD's have resulted in over a Billion $$ in new developments. Developments that would not have happened without urban renewal. On the flip side CCDC and downtown urban renewal districts have limited redevelopment outside the URD'S. This is where URD's should not be automatically renewed but carefully analyzed. Sorry I'll get off my soap box now.
I live in Bonner County in the Westside Fire District. The City of Dover is receives fire protection service from Westside. Dover is very well off financially and has just recently agreed to release the remaining surplus funds back to the service agencies, which is great. I just learned of this in about two months ago because I attend Fire District meetings.
The reality of this situation is that residents of the district outside of the development area were subsidizing fire protection for the redevelopment area.
H436 gave some more flexibility to fire districts that overlap with urban renewal districts.
Maybe.
I’ll dive into that issue soon.
Correct, I believe that is why The URA had to relinquish funds back to the Fire District that were not either budgeted or encumbered. HB208 rewrote the law on consolidating fire districts. Section 2 is difficult for me to interpret. It appears to suggest that a fire district can levy a tax on property in the district of twenty-four hundredths percent (.24%) without going to a vote. I hope this is not the case, but it is vague.
URD's are an important mechanism to rehabilitate degraded areas or to encourage commercial/industrial growth into specific zones. Like anything it can be mismanaged or poorly utilized. However, poor management of one shouldn't cast a cloud on the whole mechanism There are those in the legislature ( specically Moyle) who are against URD's but will support every kind of break imaginable for corporate interests particularly real estate developers. I believe the ITD site was stopped by Moyle primarily because it was in an URD.While the state code does allow and regulate URD's the legislature should let the cities decide on the specifics for their community. Boise has had URD's for decades. CCDC was very poorly run early on and almost disbanded. Former Mayor Bieter turned that around and downtown URD's have resulted in over a Billion $$ in new developments. Developments that would not have happened without urban renewal. On the flip side CCDC and downtown urban renewal districts have limited redevelopment outside the URD'S. This is where URD's should not be automatically renewed but carefully analyzed. Sorry I'll get off my soap box now.
It's definitely a complex issue, and I've barely scratched the surface. Thanks for sharing.