This time from Bill Thunberg, the former mayor of Mooresville and currently executive director of the Lake Norman Transportation Commission, on the possible use of tax increment financing (TIFs) to help built a commuter rail line from Charlotte to southern Iredell County and maybe eventually to Salisbury:
There’s not going to be a tax increase, or a tax obligation that the general public is liable for.
This is true only if it gets built and they come. If they don’t come, that is to say that the development that would generate the revenue from the TIF to help pay for the rail line does not happen, tax payers will very much be on the hook. And assuming build-it-and-they-come will automatically work in the current environment is just plain crazy.
Thunberg may want to ask Roanoke Rapids residents how its decision to use TIFs to build the Randy Parton Theatre as an attraction to draw tourists worked out and what impact its had on property taxes and services there.
