Okaloosa County BOCC — February 4, 2014 — [White Paper] FINAL - Okaloosa County Citizens Transporation Committee — reading text

Summary and Recommendations The Committee, at the outset of its investigation, explored multiple options to support the improvement of Okaloosa County’s transportation infrastructure. This included tax and fee increases, grant opportunities and other forms of long term financing. The committee, after deliberation, established several criteria for benchmarking alternatives and continued analysis. These criteria included:  Final proposal must be revenue neutral  Final proposal must continue to generate increasing revenue for the county in order to cover long-term and increasing costs of government  Final proposal must allow the taxing authority to increase or decrease its tax rate as needed to accommodate operations, annually  Final proposal must not increase taxes  Final proposal must generate substantial revenue  Final proposal must focus on transportation issues surrounding the Highway 85/Highway 90/ Interstate 10 corridors.  Final proposal must be long-term in nature.  Final proposal must include collaboration among multiple taxing districts in the County. The Committee quickly settled on the creation of a Tax Increment Financing District to overlay Okaloosa County north of the Eglin Reservation. The committee, through the research and discovery process, determined that the TIF District should structured so as to allow Type 1 and Type 2 money to continue to accrue to the taxing districts while Type 3 and Type 4 monies accrue to the TIF District. The Committee also determined that success of the TIF District hinges on the creation of a successful partnership between Okaloosa County and the City of Crestview in order to generate sufficient revenue for the infrastructure project. If these conditions are met, the TIF Committee determined that  The structure of the TIF will allow growth revenue to accrue to the taxing units (County and City) thus paying for future growth in the taxing units while at the same time generating substantial revenues for TIF district over its 20 year proposed life.  The TIF district will accrue over $80 million in total revenue over the 20 year period with a net present value of over $40 million at a 5% discount rate.  The funding stream will be substantial, but will not be adequate to complete the proposed expansion of the PJ Adams Corridor.  The solution is not immediate – it will be several years before the TIF generates sufficient revenues to begin work on the PJ Adams Corridor project.  The County and City must actively leverage the TIF funding stream against state and federal infrastructure improvement matching dollars in order to complete the entirety of the project.  The creation of the TIF district does not require any tax increases on the part of the City of Crestview or Okaloosa County in order to generate revenue.