Improvement district

The community of Libby, especially in the core city areas, needs to change and change drastically.

Downtown revitalization plans have been kicked around until most business people and some property owners have been smitten by drawings showing a place Libby could possibly become. And it's not that far to go.

But knowing how difficult change is to implement, how independent people can get, and how financially concerned property owners can get when government and quasi-government entities begin talking improvement and special districts, I have to wonder if we've spent enough time discussing where it is we are going and is everybody ready to get on board?

Libby is no different than any other community in this country, and people need to know there is not a large grant sitting behind this proposal. That funding will likely have to come, at least in part, from the property owners in the special improvement district.

This doesn't necessarily mean there will be a property tax increase for properties within the SID. But there could be. There could be some revenue-based funding such as so much above the average sales goal goes toward retirement of the district debt. Or their could be a special sales taxing district. Or there could be a wider collection of the needed funds — say city wide or even community wide — but for now the improvements occur within the SID.

What ever the funding mechanism, it has to be discussed and discussed and then discussed with the property owners and business people within the special district. And it can't be done too many times.

This shouldn't be perceived as a negative thing but a positive. Something good is being proposed and the proposal is being pushed forward. That's unusual around here.

Sales tax is always a bad word to throw out in Montana. But in this instance, it offers a perfect example of how the increase in sales tax above a baseline — say the taxes collected before construction begins on a special improvement district — are dedicated to the SID. I've seen that work numerous times where every penny above a 5 percent increase in sales tax collections is used for making public improvements downtown.

The improvements are made with the help of bonds and the bonds are retired by the increased sales tax revenues that come from making the improvements. It works well, when you have sales tax. We can do that with revenues, too.

There's a way to do this, to finance it, but it has to involve everyone who owns property or does business within the special improvement district. If we get too far out in front of them, it will come to a grinding halt. And that lost inertia is hard to get rolling again. Especially here, where elected people tend to distance themselves from anything that could be unpopular. Give the city council credit for taking the steps they did. This is good.

We need to talk publicly about this until everyone is comfortable where it's going.

Otherwise, in 20 or 30 years, someone will be reading the Looking Back column and wonder what happened.

This project has some years in front of it but it will speed things up to have funding discussions in general until we have something more specific in terms of downtown improvements and costs. — Roger Morris