SAN ANTONIO – The city is distancing itself from a struggling housing project that received more than a million property tax dollars.<\/p>\n
The News 4 I-Team reported last week on years of delays in building those low-income apartments on the east side.<\/p>\n
The city contacted us after the story saying it did not spend $1.7 million tax dollars on the Friedrich Lofts project, which is what we reported.<\/p>\n
The city says that money was spent by an entity created by the city called the Inner City TIRZ.<\/p>\n
So, we thought we’d explain what a TIRZ is and let you decide if the city has any accountability for how that property tax money was spent.<\/p>\n
TIRZ stands for Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone.<\/p>\n
The city has created several of these zones and has a map of them on the city website.<\/p>\n
The green is the Westside TIRZ, the purple is the Hemisfair TIRZ, and the pink is the Inner City TIRZ, to name a few.<\/p>\n
When property values rise within these zones, the property tax money collected on that increased value stays inside the zone and is spent on improvements.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, that property tax money would go into the city’s general fund.<\/p>\n
The city says it was the Inner City TIRZ that spent the $1.7 million on the stalled Friedrich Lofts project and the city had nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n
But as we mentioned the TIRZ was created by city ordinance, it spends property taxes collected by the city, its governing board includes three city council members and the other board members are appointed by the council.<\/p>\n
The city also handles all administrative functions for the TIRZ, posts its agendas on the official city website, and the city answers questions from reporters about the TIRZ.<\/p>\n
The city provided a statement Tuesday afternoon:<\/p>\n
\u201cA TIRZ is a financing tool the city uses to reinvest property tax revenue growth within a specific area back into improvements in that area. The TIRZ has its own board and budget, and major actions require city council approval. TIRZ funds come only from new value created within the zone and must be spent on projects approved for that zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, what do you think? When a TIRZ spends property tax money on a project is it an independent entity with no connection to the city? Or is it acting as a part of city government?<\/p>\n
We’ll update you when and if the Friedrich Lofts project moves forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO – The city is distancing itself from a struggling housing project that received more than a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-372066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}