LOUISVILLE, Ky. A non-partisan group of state lawmakers wants to promote long-term, community-driven economic development in West Louisville – a region negatively impacted by decades of divestment – by establishing a district to fund tax increases to ensure local taxpayers’ money is available in reinvested its neighborhoods.
Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, and Louisville State Sens. Gerald Neal, Julie Raque Adams, and Morgan McGarvey on Tuesday unveiled laws to create a 30-year-old TIF district that would Includes portion of town that extends west of Ninth Street and north of Algonquin Parkway.
“This state can’t be the strongest it can be if Louisville isn’t strong. And Louisville has to be strong for my hometown to be strong,” said Stivers when she presented her proposal Tuesday morning at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage on West Muhammad Ali announced boulevard. “And with that, we hope that this process of healing, repairing, and building a better Louisville and a better Kentucky begins today.”
A TIF district enables the current development to be financed with future tax revenues from the increase in property values, sales taxes and other types of taxes expected as an area is economically revitalized.
More:The Norton Healthcare Sports & Learning Center brings hope to a once-vacant West End block
Essentially, according to lawmakers, 80% of new tax revenue generated above a base level set this year would be reinvested in West Louisville over time. That is basically 80 cents of every additional dollar.
The original goal, however, is to start this initiative with $ 30 million in “seed capital,” Stivers said. The state government would provide $ 10 million with the remaining $ 20 million coming from other public and private sources.
The overall goal of this effort, known as the West End Opportunity Partnership, is to drive reinvestment in West Louisville, which is home to many of the city’s black residents and which has long struggled with poverty and other problems based on systemic racism are based. while residents are prevented from being driven from their neighborhood by gentrification.
“I was born in Beecher Terrace and grew up in the California neighborhood,” said Neal, a Democrat and longtime senator. “I’m a product of West Louisville. The great people of these neighborhoods, like all Kentuckians, want security, including home ownership and the ability to amass wealth.”
The proposed legislation includes safeguards to ensure residents can afford to stay in their homes as economic developments and property values rise, as well as provisions to encourage community participation in review development projects funded through the TIF district become.
“We want to focus on empowerment,” Neal told The Courier Journal earlier this week.
More:Within 7 year journey to build a black owned business complex in the West End of Louisville
He noted an important safeguard in the bill: homeowners living within the boundaries of the TIF district as of January 2021 would pay property taxes for the next three decades based on the estimated value of their property that year – and so would their heirs if they do so leave them their house.
“I like to think of it as a bridgehead against erosion in a community that gives power to those who are rooted in the community, identify with it and are part of the community,” he said.
Neal described the proposed TIF district as a partnership between the state government, the city of Louisville, and the private sector, to be led by people who have historic stakes in the West End.
“There are people who struggle, struggle, invest their time and invest their lives in building this community,” he said, adding that they are needed to move this initiative forward.
The board of directors that would oversee the TIF district would be subject to specific membership rules, including a requirement that 50% of its members be black.
Five parish seats would be reserved for parishioners living in West End neighborhoods, with each of the nine neighborhoods requiring fair representation over time.
The legislation also contains provisions on the types of projects that could receive TIF funding. For example, every housing estate would need to include affordable housing – that is, not luxury condominiums where the rent for each individual unit is astronomical.
“This is really about ‘for the people, for the people,'” said McGarvey, a Louisville Democrat.
Neal and other lawmakers who helped draft the bill will understandably be skeptical.
“There will be people who ask questions. Guess you should,” said Neal. “Things were promised, things weren’t delivered (in the past). Well this is something that is a tool. It’s not a panacea, but it’s deliberate, direct action … We have an opportunity here. We have to seize. “
This skepticism was already evident on Tuesday.
Rep. Attica Scott, D-Louisville, said she needs to read the newly introduced bill before deciding whether to support it. She also questioned Stiver’s motivation for developing this proposal.
“It is apparently part of this game that Stivers is playing with blacks. I don’t know why, but he’s trying to play a white savior, “she told The Courier Journal.” He’s in Clay County and claims he takes care of the West End. He has a bill to submit that I know I haven’t seen, and some other people representing West Louisville haven’t seen it. I need to see the bill. I’m not going to get anything over and done with until I can thoroughly read a bill. “
In the announcement on Tuesday, Stivers stressed that this proposal arose from around nine months of work and, above all, from listening to people who are closely involved in the affected community.
“We came and listened, we worked and then we listened, we drew and then we listened,” he said.
McGarvey described this proposal as a stepping stone for further initiatives.
“This is not Frankfurt’s saying: ‘We come in on a white horse and will do everything right that was ever wrong.’ What this is is a first answer, “McGarvey told the Courier Journal. “This is recognition we’ve seen and heard cries for change.”
If the legislature’s proposal is approved by the Republican-dominated state assembly, it will become law this summer.
“It was just very refreshing to come together and have an open and honest dialogue about what we want to do, what we can do, what we think is possible,” said Republican Raque Adams of the months of effort that led to this Legislation. “And make no mistake: I think this is a very aggressive attempt to address some of the systemic inequalities we have.”
This story will be updated.
Reach reporter Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; mwatkins@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @ morganwatkins26.