The Mayor and Commission voted to reallocate tax revenue from the East Downtown Tax Allocation District Redevelopment Plan last night.
Commissioner Tiffany Taylor of District 3 urged her colleagues to reconsider how money will be distributed by the East Downtown Tax Allocation (TAD) Plan.
TADs are specific areas slated for redevelopment funded by increased tax revenue from residents in the TAD area.
Commissioner Taylor stated that the current plan to allocate 30% of generated revenue from redevelopment downtown, including the new arena, would not meet the needs of her community.
“The district I represent, if you ride through the East side, than you’ll see that we have been under-allocated and underfunded and we need resources, so we are not taking 30%. We want to come up with a more equitable percentage for our area. The arena, although it does have private investment, it also has been paid for by taxpayer dollars, which are also East Side dollars, inner East Side dollars. And what I don’t want to see is that monstrosity go up and my community still looks the same as it did when I was a little girl,” Taylor declared.
Commissioner Ovita Thornton of District 9 was in agreement.
“We’ve invested a lot downtown, and we’ll do a lot more investing. And this gives that side of town that has been neglected for so long an extra foot up,” she noted.
Mayor Kelly Girtz also chimed in, stating that the East Downtown TAD was developed with the East Athens neighborhood in mind.
“Certainly the way it was drawn was to create some opportunity to draw wealth into that part of town, without a doubt,” Girtz mentioned.
The commission ultimately voted unanimously to allocate 70% of East Downtown TAD revenue to the East Athens neighborhood.
