Agenda - Council - 08/28/1990 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Fiscal Disparities Recommendation 5 23 Exclude vacant land zoned commercial-industrial from the contribution pool. Vacant land, regardless of how it is zoned, should be excluded. Like differences in contributions caused by differences in assessment practices, the practice of in- cluding vacant commercial-industrial land in the pool results in communities being treated differently even if there was no difference in their commercial-industrial development. Con- tributions become dependent upon arbitrary zoning prac- tices. Another reason for exclusion is that it is inappropriate to treat the inflationary, growth of vacant land as if it were actual commercial-industrial development. Recommendation 6 Recommendation 7 Recommendation 8 Changes Affecting Distributions Account for demands placed on local'government resources. The Fiscal Disparities program considers only a community's resources and ignores the demands placed on those resources. A local government's fiscal health depends upon both sides of the resource equation. To ignore the demand side intro- duces a new set of disparities. For example, Minneapolis and Hennepin County export taxes under the Fiscal Disparities program, yet experience a disproportionate demand upon their resources. On the other hand, many townships have relative.ly low taxes yet benefit from the program because they have low commercial-industrial growth. Restrict participation in the Fiscal Disparities program to cities that seek commercial-industrial development. This would prevent cities from receiving distributions if they in- tentionally prohibit commercial-industrial development or place undue restrictions on it. An example of a city with such restrictions, which the Fiscal Disparities law was not intended to subsidize, is North Oaks. Such communities do not incur the added public service and infrastructure costs needed to support commercial-industrial development and do not have a legitimate claim to revenues generated by . commercial-industrial growth in other c6mmunities. Include all personal property subject to the property tax when computing fiscal capacity. Under.existing law, a city with a large mobile-home population is treated more favorably than an identical city whose residents .live in conventional homes. P~ople living in mobile homes are included in the denomina- tor when computing the fiscal capacity quotient, but the value of their homes is not included in the numerator. This lowers the city's fiscal capacity and allows it a larger distrib- ution.