The Wittenberg Village Board voted unanimously April 16 to close its first tax incremental finance district early to make room for forming a fourth district in the village this year.
The first TID encompassed the Marshfield Clinic, Nueske’s and the Northcentral Technical College building, according to Village Clerk Traci Matsche.
According to consultant Harry Allen, the TID is being closed for two reasons. The district is distressed, which means there’s more expense than revenue coming in for that district, and that district is past its expenditure period.
“With it being distressed, it actually has to close as soon as it has recovered all of its project costs,” Allen said. “Even if you wanted to, you can’t add any new costs. It really has to close once it has recovered its negative fund balance.”
Allen added that the village will still receive one more payment from the TID because of the timing of the closure. To make the first TID solvent, the village recently amended its third TID to take some of the funds from that district to get the first TID out of the red.
“Even with the collection next year, the district would not have recovered its full fund position, so TID 3 was amended so that it can transfer excess dollars into TID 1 so we can close this out with a zero-dollar balance so there’s no impact to the village’s bottom line,” Allen said.
Village President William Switalla noted that the fourth TID has not been established yet because there is a slowdown on a housing project planned by S.C. Swiderski in the village.
Board member David Timm said there was a clause in the Swiderski contract that it could stop the project if interest rates went over 7%, and Matsche confirmed that interest rates had jumped up.
“The last we heard, though, we were still number one for getting the project as soon as the interest rates drop below 7%,” Timm said.
Matsche added that Swiderski’s engineers are still working on the Wittenberg housing, in spite of the building delay.
“They wouldn’t be doing all that if they were going to back out,” Matsche said.
Allen pointed out that having the taxes from the first TID’s businesses will increase the village levy, which means that village tax rates should drop.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
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