While I was at Wal-Mart™ last night wandering around trying to find stuff in stock and enjoying the Sunday night crowd and paying 7.9745% in sales taxes, I was thinking about what the area would like if it weren't for TIF. TIF, or Tax Increment Financing as it's known by its official title, is a mechanism by which some of the sales taxes generated by a development are diverted to pay for improvements.
Under the previous Mayor, TIF was a four letter word. However, without the KCI Corridor TIF, the Ambassador/152 interchange would not exist. Nor would the 4 lane improvement of Skyview, the 4 lane improvement of Old Tiffany Springs Road, the long planned connection of Ambassador Drive from Barry Road to Tiffany Springs Parkway, or most importantly, the widening and intersection improvements to Barry Road from I-29 to St. Lukes.
The KCI Corridor TIF encompases the area east of I-29 and generally north of Route 152. It has an Advisory Committee and that committee makes recommendations to the TIF Commission of Kansas City which then provides a recommendation to the KCMO City Council. Of the approximate 3.7% of total sales tax assessed by Platte County and KCMO, half (1.85%+/-) is used by the KCI Corridor TIF to finance street improvements. All of the TIF incentive diverted from the Wal-Mart™, Lowe's™, Home Depot™, Best Buy™, Target™, etc has been used to fund the off-site street improvements listed above and others.
A key policy adopted by the Advisory Committee and the Council is that all the improvements funded by the KCI Corridor TIF must go for public improvements that allow the area to develop and grow the tax base. None of the TIF incentive has been used to pay for parking lots, buildings, landscaping, or other items that soley benefit a single developer. The benefit to everyone using a TIF and only using it for public improvements is that things get done sooner, faster, and cheaper. It only took 5 months to widen and fix Barry Road from I-29 to St. Lukes which can be contrasted to the prolonged timeframe it has taken to fix Barry Road west of I-29.
Without the KCI Corridor TIF, the Barry Road and I-29 corridor would not have seen an increase to over $1 billion in taxable sales in the last 15 years and we would still be stuck waiting 2 hours to eat at Applebee's™, On The Border™, Chili's™, Minsky's™, Lone Star™, and our fine fast food restaurants that were the only places to eat in the middle of Platte County when I moved here in 1998.
I have included a map below which shows the KCI Corridor TIF boundaries in yellow shading. The blue lines denote improvements partially or fully financed by TIF that were funded in 2001. The green lines denote improvements partially or fully financed by TIF that were funded in 2004. The purple lines denote improvements partially or fully financed by TIF that were funded in 2009. Lines in light orange are unfunded by in the TIF plan as potential improvements if additional commercial development occurs. The potential Menards™ that is moving through the city development process is surrounded by the red lines.
Unfunded improvements would be to finally bring Old Tiffany Springs Road up to an urban standard and replace the retro 1960's tractor bridge over I-29 and someday extend Tiffany Springs Parkway over to Green Hills Road.
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