Equipment sits idle around the developing area on Aetna Mountain Road on Wednesday. New development in the area around Aetna Mountain Road is causing a stir.After a long court battle and a moratorium on tax breaks, the Chattanooga City Council is getting a new lesson on so-called Tax Increment Financing.
James Weaver, with Waller, Lansden, Dortch & Davis of Nashville, is giving them an education session on how TIFs work, what they are good for and how they should be used.
In 2012, the council put a 90-day hold on such deals after the approval for the Black Creek Mountain TIF, which gave a developer $9 million in taxpayer financing to build a road from a golf course community to the top of Aetna Mountain.
That deal brought on multiple lawsuits from critic Helen Burns Sharp, who charged the TIF wasn’t needed and that the Industrial Development Board met illegally to make it happen.
The council put a hold on more deals, because it wanted to write ground rules for future tax brakes. But those never got written.