TIFF helps make development happen that otherwise would not, but the city council gets to determine when you approve a TIFF. Just cuz you hear from your consultants, your staff professionals that this district qualifies, this project will not move forward without tax increment financing assistance. That does not mean that the city council has to approve that.

TIFF revenue does not come from existing taxpayers because it is in funded entirely by the new tax taxes generated by the new development. That often comes up when I'm before city councils on tiff and saying we're taking money from the school district or we're taking money from the county and we're using it. My answer is always no...

It's a financing method to capture the increase in value from new development... it is the taxes on that building that generate the increment. The taxes on the land, those taxes continue to go to the respective taxing jurisdictions and are not captured. That's where that word increment comes from. It's the incremental increase.

If you are providing a million dollars to a a warehouse building of tiff that triggers under a different state law that is a business subsidy. Housing no matter the amount of assistance doesn't qualify as a business subsidy under Minnesota law.

how do we determine if this project would not have happened. But for TIFF, what's the what's the determining factor there? Is that very subjective? Again, it's probably, you know, kind of based off of experts, but I I'm just trying to wrap my head around my my head around that because that's one of my concerns is who's determining if this would happen but for using this tip?

The market rate return has to be 7%. Um, you know, over 15 years or no one's going to do it. And they'll say based on a sanitized performer, the developer only needs this amount of tiff to make it a market rate of return. And it's it's not an exact science, but it's based on the information you have, you get the best estimates you can.

It's written to be intentionally flexible. So, there's a policy um subsidy act that's in the state statute. There's, you know, there's pretty short sections of this, but the city has to follow this in terms of implementing a business subsidy, and business subsidies are considered investments in the city of Lake Elmo meant to encourage desirable development or redevelopment that benefits the city.

If it's the opposite and it's something that, you know, all a sudden you have a council of five that really want a project, but it it doesn't meet the butt for test. It's a hard no. Correct.

My concern is if you if you throw a tool in the toolkit and you don't know how to use that tool appropriately or you don't use the tool appropriately and that I guess that is my biggest concern. I I just I'm in general um I I can't imagine many areas where you know even if this did pass where a request for a business subsidy would come up.

If you have a dilapidated property sitting there empty and the cost of cleaning it up makes it undevelopable for basically any purpose, but you'd like to see some development there and a development comes in that would enhance the city, but the return just isn't there. you could then make determine use our business subsidy and tiff to make it make it the business so it would actually be profitable for someone to make that investment as opposed to sitting and looking at you know a garbage dump for the next 30 years.

I would or even the language of it can, you know, adding a bullet in there that specifically says it can pass all of these things and you can still just not like this project and you can say no. Right. Like I I want that to be I guess clear in there so there's no question...

I have an analogy now... Had had that not been an option previously in one of my my places of employment, there were going to be five projects over a 10-year period in two municipalities that would had to deal with work on this roadway with five different projects... We delivered that project with design bill in two years. So we saved traffic for those eight years and at a probably a a cost savings because you did not have that future funding cost.