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Riverside voters reject TIF district referendum
All three advisory referendum overwhelmingly defeated
By BOB UPHUES
Riverside voters overwhelmingly rejected the concept of creating a tax increment financing (TIF) district in Riverside in Tuesday's consolidated elections.
With 9 of 11 precincts reporting, 1,469 votes were cast against the TIF while 384 votes were cast for it. While the referendum is only advisory, the margin of the vote--79.3 percent to 20.7 percent--was seen by TIF opponents as indisputable evidence that Riversiders are opposed to any TIF in the village.
Riverside's two other advisory referendums were also soundly defeated. A question asking whether voters would accept a property tax increase in lieu of a TIF was voted down 1,346-426. Another asking whether the village ought to reconsider zoning in the central business district to allow non-commercial uses on ground floor spaces failed by a 1,278-514 margin.
"The outcry of no votes against this is incredible," said Mark Shevitz, one of several anti-TIF campaigners gathered Tuesday night to track election returns.
"I hope that gives the trustees some pause."
Shevitz noted that the total number of votes cast against the TIF question was greater than the number cast for any of the trustees running unopposed for seats on the village board.
"They can't ignore the will of the voters," Shevitz said. "The village board will either listen to the voters or the developers who want this TIF. It's up to them to decide."
Riverside Village President Harold J. Wiaduck Jr. said he was disappointed by the margin of defeat on the TIF question.
"It's a fairly strong message," said Wiaduck. "The opponents were definitely working much harder than the village. We had to be as neutral as possible trying to explain what the referendum meant."
Riverside officials began hinting at a possible push for a downtown TIF district back in 2005, during public sessions of the transit-oriented development (TOD) study, a central business district planning document officially accepted by the village board in 2006.
The board voted in February 2006 to begin the TIF process by hiring a financial consulting firm to create a preliminary report. Since that time Riverside has paid its TIF consultant, Kane, McKenna & Associates, over $80,000 for services related to the creation of a TIF district in downtown Riverside.
But the TIF issue moved along under the surface of public discourse until late summer of 2006, when the Frederick Law Olmsted Society's president, James Reynolds, published a piece in the society's newsletter that was critical of the TIF idea.
The issue exploded in November 2006 following two public meetings that drew crowds of residents, many of whom spoke out passionately against the creation of a TIF. The hostility to the TIF appeared to catch the village board off guard, and trustees agreed shortly thereafter to suspend the move toward a TIF so that several community workshops could be arranged to discuss the future of the central business district and possible solutions. Several different plans for the downtown were aired for discussion during those sessions, but they ended with a reaffirmation by participants that they didn't support a downtown TIF.
Since the workshops ended trustees have decried what they described as a misinformation campaign by anti-TIF residents to scare neighbors into believing that trustees were eyeing private properties for seizure and had cut a deal with a developer to subsidize high-density development.
What effect the advisory referendum vote will have on the decision of trustees to continue moving forward with the TIF is unclear, although there is at least one pro-TIF board member, Thomas Shields, who is already on record as saying the vote totals won't change his mind on pursuing a TIF.
"Obviously this is something we can't ignore," said Shields. "But there's an awful lot of misinformation out there and a lot of scare tactics, so I'm not surprised it turned out this way.
"I hope we can move forward and explore [the TIF] as a vehicle to help the central business district."