DeKalb Joint Review Board members ready to move forward with city’s TIF 3 agreement in place

DeKALB – After years of working out the terms with local taxing districts for a new tax increment financing district within the City of DeKalb, members of the Joint Review Board said they were relieved to have a relatively quiet meeting this week.

DeKalb City Manager Bill Nicklas said during the Friday meeting it’s the first time the board has met since governing bodies for all of the taxing districts approved the TIF district’s intergovernmental agreement.

“In six months, I would say that we did a lot of good work,” Nicklas said.

According to the intergovernmental agreement, the new annual surplus for the district known as TIF 3 is declared to start in 2022 and benefiting taxing districts would receive 30% of those funds and it would increase to 50% in 2026. DeKalb County Administrator Gary Hanson has said he believes the agreement would potentially give $13 million total over the TIF’s lifetime of about 20 years to all of the taxing bodies.

The DeKalb Park District Board of Commissioners was the last taxing body to approve the agreement during their Jan. 7 meeting. Along with the park district, the agreement also includes governing boards and councils for DeKalb County, the DeKalb County Forest Preserve District, DeKalb School District 428, the City of DeKalb, the Kishwaukee Water Reclamation District, the DeKalb Public Library, Kishwaukee College, DeKalb Township and DeKalb Township Road and Bridge District.

Not only did the joint review board come up with something that all of the involved taxing bodies ultimately supported, Nicklas said, but those taxing bodies also jumped on it in a deliberate fashion and got through the entire process.

“It’s a fabric of how we proceed from here,” Nicklas said.

DeKalb School District 428 officials previously raised concerns about administrative fees being incorrectly charged on various TIF projects and that amount ranged from $500,000 to $800,000 a year from 2008 to 2018. An audit of the City of DeKalb’s tax increment finance spending since 2008 found the city used $7.9 million in TIF funds to offset salary costs, lacked consistent and complete record-keeping for TIF spending, and was including sales tax revenue in the TIF surplus to grow the increment.

Nicklas had said the city’s TIF processes have conformed to what the TIF 3 agreement required and that came from productive conversation between the taxing bodies. He said the city also has stopped taking money out of TIF funds for any administrative purposes, whether it’s justified in state law or not.

Cindy Carpenter, business and finance director for DeKalb School District 428, said the board has been working on the agreement for years – and definitely feels like it. She said it was nice to finally have an agreement finalized and it’s great to be in a spot where the board can finally move forward.

“I feel like it’s been a long time coming,” Carpenter said.

After being thanked for his time spent on the board and on the agreement, DeKalb County Interim Administrator Gary Hanson said he appreciated the thanks during his last joint review board meeting before his successor Brian Gregory takes over March 1. He also made mention of how the Friday meeting was a lot less eventful and more quiet than previous ones.

“It’s a nice way for me to end,” Hanson said.