TIF Funding

TIF funding is a unique tool and can and should be used to lure employers or other attractions into our city.  They should be used judiciously and should not be used to provide incentives for a company that wants to come in and compete with existing Manitowoc businesses. 

For example, creating a TIF to help pay for intersection improvements so that Festival Foods can set up shop is not sound policy.  People are not going to start spending more money on groceries just because there is a new supermarket in town.  Instead, they are going to spend the same amount of groceries, but now they will split it up among 5 grocery stores (Festival, Copps, Rob's, WalMart, Pig) instead of 4.  That means that any business that Festival gets is going to be taken away from one of the 4 existing stores.  (I know that it has been suggested that some people will travel to Manitowoc from out of town just to shop at Festival, but I think that this number will be quite small.)  Does the City really want to get involved in helping to fund a project that will hurt existing City businesses? 

Differently, if an employer such as a manufacturer or a service-based company wanted to locate here and was promising to employ a certain number of people, a TIF would probably be appropriate.  The employer would create jobs that were not here before and would not take business away from existing businesses.  (I know that Festival Foods will provide jobs too.) 

Not all TIFs are created equal.  We need to use them judiciously.