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ELKINS -- Randolph County Assessor Phyllis Yokum provided the Randolph County Commission with an update about the work being done to compile numbers for Elkins' Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District.
"As you know, the City of Elkins has a TIF District now, and you have asked me to keep you up to date with what is happening with it," Yokum told the commissioners during Thursday's meeting. "What TIF basically means is there has to be a base value year, which in this case it's 2023. So we set that base for 2023 on the assessments, and anything that goes up in 2024, we have to keep track of and the money from that increase goes into that TIF."
Yokum, who presented a map to the commission that outlined the TIF District, said her office has been hard at work for weeks gathering all the information needed for the TIF.
"We have been working diligently on this, and I have some unofficial statistics for the TIF District," Yokum said. "There are 792 parcels in the real estate part of the TIF District. There are 16 apartment buildings, 313 commercial properties, 18 industrial properties, 273 residential properties, 170 exempt properties in the TIF District. According to our calculations, it consists of 313.05 acres."
Yokum said her office currently has two clerks working on the personal property commercial accounts for the TIF.
"I have no preliminary numbers on that yet, because that is so difficult," she said. "The City of Elkins went through the account for personal property businesses and picked out what they knew was inside the TIF. But a lot of companies do business at DBAs, so you can't readily look at that report and say 'oh yeah, there's your business.' It might be operating under a business name, DBA, or another name. So they weren't able to pick out all the businesses."
Yokum told the commission that her office is working tirelessly on completing all the work for the TIF, but said she is unsure if it will get done by the date originally scheduled.
"I had told the City of Elkins I would have numbers for them by the end of December. At this point I'm not sure that is going to happen," Yokum said. "The more I check into it, the more I learn. And at this point I probably won't have solid figures until I do my certification, which I have to have done by March 3."
Because of all the extra work being put into gathering numbers for the TIF, Yokum said vendors will have to be used to help with the process.
"This TIF is going to require us to work with two of our vendors," she noted. "It's just been a lot of work and it's just not a one-time thing. It is something that my office will be required to do every year for the next 30 years."
Yokum said she had spoken to Todd Hooker from the West Virginia Development Office to see if the county could be reimbursed for the extra time and employees it is using to gather the TIF information.
"Because it's taking time by our vendors and taking a lot of time by my employees, I wanted to see if the county could be reimbursed," Yokum said. "So I talked to Mr. Hooker, who said there is nothing in writing, but that the city and county should discuss this, and that it is reasonable for the county to ask for a certain amount of money out of the TIF to compensate the county for the work we have to put into the TIF."
Yokum said any money the county would receive as compensation would come directly out of the TIF funds.
"I want you to keep track of the time so that we have an estimated number that we will bill the City of Elkins for," Commission President David Kesling told Yokum. "This is why it's so frustrating, because I feel the mayor and the City Council of Elkins just saw the dollar signs that they could potentially get, and did not look at the ramifications it is going to cost the county and your staff."
Kesling said the money the county is going to lose from Elkins' TIF will affect many different people and organizations.
"About 7% of our county budget could possibly go to them from this TIF," Kesling said. "That's a lot of money that we will not have to buy new police cruisers, hire new deputies, help the EMS, and help all the people who come asking for money at every meeting.
"(The city) just saw that number that they could get, and it's free money for them. It just makes me so upset anytime I hear the word TIF."
To fund several costly redevelopment projects, the City of Elkins enacted a plan to issue up to $25 million in tax increment revenue bonds. In January, Elkins City Council voted to submit an application to the state to issue bonds in order to fund projects through TIF. The TIF application was approved by the state on April 7.
The TIF district plan has been controversial, with county officials publicly opposing it.
Randolph County Commissioners David Kesling and Cris Siler told The Inter-Mountain at the time that they were stunned to learn that the TIF process, if enacted, would result in some future tax money being rerouted from the county to pay for the city's renovation projects -- and that this would continue for the next 30 years.
Prior to the TIF application's approval, the Randolph County Commission announced that it would ask the Department of Economic Development to decline the city's TIF application, and sent out an opposition letter to the organization.