The Bellevue City Council established an Urban Renewal Agency earlier this month in order to implement a long-term program of redevelopment and revitalization downtown and along the Big Wood River.
All current City Council members as well as former council President Vivian Ivie were appointed by Mayor Jon Anderson as commissioners on the agency. The new URA is designed to raise money over the next 24 years for city improvements based on a projected increase in property values in the downtown area.
Planned projects under the URA include improving parking, lighting and streets, modernizing city infrastructure, and updating sewer services. According to a memo provided by city Planning and Zoning Administrator Craig Eckles, the Bellevue URA project costs will be financed by several means, including annual "revenue allocation funds" and bond proceeds. "Under the Urban Renewal Agency plan no new taxes will be assessed to property owners," Eckles said. "This is only a shift. The agency will allow us to raise money through other funding mechanisms."
Typically, URAs seek to collect the "increment," or the increase in value from one year to the next, from properties within the URA boundaries. The method captures new growth values—meaning money—that otherwise would go to taxing entities such as the city, county, and cemetery, recreation, ambulance and fire districts. School districts are exempt.
The Bellevue URA will depend upon increases in the 2007 assessed property valuation of a designated Revenue Allocation Area—which covers 77 city blocks of downtown Bellevue—estimated to be nearly $360,000,000. The assessed valuation of real and personal property in the area beginning on Jan. 1, 2007, can provide for developer loans and other funding mechanisms for redevelopment projects, city officials said.
Once the projects are completed and any bonds and loans are repaid, the increases in assessed value of real and personal property in the Revenue Allocation Area could become available for use by other taxing entities, city officials noted.
