The working groups for the all three proposed East Portland Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Districts voted this week to move the districts along to the Prosper Portland Board on August 28, and presumably from there to a City Council vote in October.
This is a BIG deal.
Tax Increment Financing is a 30-year strategy to fund “sticks and bricks” improvements within the boundary of each TIF district using tax revenues generated within that district. $770 million is expected to be raised in “our” TIF during the duration of the process, to be reinvested here. TIF is intended to leverage other investments, as well, so that the total invested will likely be much more than this large number (even though something like 20-30% of the dollars will go to Prosper Portland for administration, let’s not forget).
TIF won’t create community; it won’t address past broken promises; it is not a be-all end-all fix. But this is money we won’t have to scrap for from the City’s general fund, which we can put to use here creating the kind of affordable housing, economic development, and infrastructure improvements that we want.
There is SO much more to say about TIF. As someone who served on the East of 205 working group, meeting 2x monthly (and sometimes more) for the last 9 months, I am really excited to see this move forward. I also foresee that the Community Leadership Committee (CLC) for each TIF district is going to be an incredibly important accountability mechanism, to make sure that the monies are invested in line with our community’s priorities.
What I am most enthusiastic about right now is the prospect of building the leadership bench for Centennial, and East Portland more broadly, to ensure that we have consistent and representative engagement on our TIF CLC (and the others — they matter, too!). We’ll need to field 13 representatives to each CLC at any given time for the next 30 years. That’s a lot of East Portland leaders!!!!
I am also very (very) curious to see if we can develop a vision for Centennial that this money can be used to pursue. What kind of place are we? What kind of place do we want to be? How do we make a community that works better for the folks who are already here and welcomes many more who will be coming because of climate disruptions, political instability, etc.?
We have such an opportunity here to find ourselves and bridge our community into the future. Let’s goooooooooooo!!