Geneva City Council Approves New TIF District

Aldermen refused a second counter offer from the Geneva school board at a special city council meeting on July 25, the Daily Herald reports.

The council voted 7-2 to establish the Geneva Fox River Redevelopment Project Area, a third tax increment finance district, according to the story.

School attorney Rick Petesch presented the council with the school board's signed counter-offer that asks for taxes from 13 properties.

"To not even consider all the time and effort that the school district put in to meeting deadlines and making proposals and counter-proposals and then to not even have them be considered," Petesch said in the report by the Kane County Chronicle. "I believe the school board will be very disappointed when I inform them as well," said Petesch.

Mayor Kevin Burns said the council could not act on a counteroffer if aldermen did not receive an intergovernmental agreement offered earlier by the city, the council would move forward with a TIF district without it, the Kane County Chronicle reports.

Delaying the process would cause the city to miss the deadline for establishing the TIF district, said Fifth Ward Alderman Craig Maladra in the story.

"That was my point about the deadline. This is not a game," said Maladra.

The 98-acre TIF district east of Route 31, to School Street, also called the Geneva Fox River Redevelopment Area, includes Geneva Bottling Works and the vacant Mill Race Inn restaurant, the Kane County Chronicle reports.

More via Kane County Chronicle and Daily Herald