The City of Fayetteville has a referendum on the Nov.6 ballot that reads “Shall the Act be approved which authorizes the City of Fayetteville to exercise Redevelopment Powers….” and is commonly referred to the “TAD Referendum.”
When you boil it down to “plain English,” what it means is that if you, the citizens of Fayetteville, vote YES and pass the referendum, the City will then have the authority to create Tax Allocation Districts (TADs) that could be used to partially fund redevelopment [of some] of our tired looking older shopping centers. Passage of the referendum does not guarantee that anything WILL happen.
To be successful we would also need the cooperation of the county and the school board to agree to fix their tax collections at the present values for any TAD that is created.
However, my gut feeling is that since Fayetteville is a desirable place to live and Fayette County is still among the highest income counties in GA, if we have TAD financing available, developers will be “knocking on our doors” wanting to redevelop these properties.
If I am right, we could see redevelopment commence as early as the end of 2013. If I am wrong and no redevelopment occurs even though we have TAD financing available, while we have not seen a direct benefit, neither have we lost anything by having TAD financing as one of the tools in our redevelopment tool box.
You may be sure that if we are not successful in attracting redevelopment when TADs available, we cannot realistically expect redevelopment in the near future, period. Lets “take a chance on TAD,” please vote yes on the Redevelopment Powers Referendum.
Thank you for your consideration,
Greg Clifton, Mayor
Fayetteville, Ga.
