Item A: Downtown Development Financial Tools

Home Browse Search

Urban Renewal Tax Rates Per $1000 of Assessed Value Eugene Urban Eugene Urban Total Urban Bill for Fiscal Year City of Eugene Renewal Renewal Renewal Tax Median Downtown Riverfront Rate Taxpayer EndingSpecial Levy 6/30/03 $0.2246 $0.3086 $0.0624 $0.5956 N/A 6/30/04 0.2014 0.2471 0.0585 0.5070 $65 6/30/05 0.2229 0.2655 0.0664 0.5548 74 6/30/06 0.2013 0.2001 0.0619 0.4633 64 6/30/07 0.1888 0.1936 0.0645 0.4469 64 6/30/08 estimate 0.1800 0.1900 0.0600 0.4300 63 Source: Lane County Assessment and Taxation for historic tax rates and assessed value of median home. Median home assessed value not available prior to 6/30/04. Impact on Other Taxing Jurisdictions The overlapping jurisdictions (schools, city, county) are kept whole when a district is created through the division of taxes calculation explained above. The overlapping districts retain the taxes on the value of property within the district at its creation. Urban renewal generally does not affect an individual school system?s operating budget because schools are funded by the state on a per-pupil basis. On a state-wide basis, if there are less property tax revenues going to schools because of urban renewal districts, then the state has to provide more general fund dollars to make up the per-pupil funding requirement for all the schools. If a district has a local option levy, however, that local option levy revenue could be reduced as a result of urban renewal incremental value. For other taxing jurisdictions, the share of property taxes from the ?excess value? or ?incremental value? is not collected by the overlapping jurisdictions during the period of an active district. Urban renewal nominally affects certain voter-approved local option levies and bonds because the affected district has less property value to levy taxes against, resulting in slightly higher tax rates. The incentive for the overlapping districts to support urban renewal is higher property tax revenues in the long run. Ultimately when the district is ended, the overlapping taxing districts are able to tax the entire value within the district. Under the theory of urban renewal, this value is higher than it would have been if there had been no district in effect. The gross amount of urban renewal taxes to be divided for both districts in FY07 is shown on the following chart. As can be seen in the chart, the Downtown District can only collect division of tax revenues from permanent tax rates, and bonded debt and local option levies that were passed by voters prior to October 2001. Therefore, the Downtown District lists zero for the library local option levy, the youth/schools local option levy and the School District 4J local option levy.