Infrastructure at heart of 2023 city budget
Street repairs, building for battery plant priorities for Kokomo; where will workers live?
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The City of Kokomo spends a lot of its budget on public safety. Nearly 60 percent of the general fund is devoted to the police and fire departments. However, the city’s infrastructure also falls under the public safety umbrella, and Mayor Tyler Moore’s 2023 budget holds it as a high priority as well.
While the exact list of street repairs for next year is nowhere near finalized, Moore does have a few preferences when it comes to which roads get attention.
“We are maintaining the amount of funds available for resurfacing and addressing streets,” said Moore. “Really, there’s not too much different from 2022. As far as I know, we will get some Community Connections grant money
“A lot of the projects are coming in higher, so focusing on having the matching funds for those projects is important. As far as I know, for what (Director of Engineering Services) Jon (Pyke) is proposing, we have the money. It would be nice to do more and take advantage of funding that may come available. But from what I understand, to finish up 2022 and looking at 2023, we have those budgeted.”
Finishing work on Park Avenue, Markland Avenue, and Center Road is the priority through the end of the year, Moore explained. Those projects were selected through an “either/or” process which the mayor said he was presented with for the 2023 resurfacing budget as well. In both cases, Moore went for the larger projects that involve heavily travelled streets.
“As we went through the 2022 budget, there were areas like Park Avenue where Jon said, ‘we can do these three smaller projects or Park Avenue,” said Moore. “I said, ‘do Park.’ It was the same way this year. There is a stretch of North Street from Ohio Street to 931 that needs some love. I know we’re doing Apperson Way from Jackson Street all the way up to Morgan Street.
“We’re looking at Alto Road east (Webster to Lafountain). Dixon Road is one that has gotten a lot of attention, but we are looking at Dixon from the bridge at Markland Avenue north to Sycamore Street. That’s one of the big ones. I’d like to see that one done.”
Of course, there is an even larger project on the city’s plate for 2023 which may command the lion’s share of city resources. The proposed Samsung/Stellantis battery plant will need a significant investment in infrastructure to transform farm fields into factory floors. The city is still waiting to learn just how much it will need to cover that cost.
“We don’t know how much the city will have to invest to ensure infrastructure is in place for the battery plant,” said Moore. “We probably are going to have to do some creative financial work. We will TIF it.”
A TIF, or Tax Increment Financing district, is an area designated by government within which all property taxes paid by the entities within its borders are returned to the district for investment, most commonly in infrastructure.
The reason governmental units like TIFs is they help a development pay for itself over time. However, it means that the impact of the investment isn’t felt by other governmental units, which can cause friction between the city, county, and other taxing units.
There is another concern surrounding the battery plant that isn’t budget related on its face but may require funding to resolve. Kokomo’s employment situation is such that filling 1,400 jobs may be difficult. It likely will mean workers from other communities travelling to the city for work. That means revenue generated here but leaving at the end of the day.
How does the city convince those workers to call Kokomo home? According to Moore, the city’s housing and apartment stocks are surprisingly low.
“Right now, if we were to start next week, we don’t have the housing inventory,” said Moore. “So, we need to find ways to get builders to increase our housing inventory. Even our apartment inventory is low. When the companies were looking at bringing in workers to build the plant, I think there were only 34 available apartments.”
The mayor said the city and Howard County will have to make a concerted effort to increase the community’s housing inventory, finding ways to spur development in an area which government rarely focuses.
“It is a legitimate concern that we don’t have an answer to,” said Moore. “With the city being all in for the battery plant, it straps us to provide any additional incentives. We have talked about relocation incentive packages similar to what Mayor (Matt) McKillip did years ago. But where do we get those monies?”
“There is now a tool that the state has permitted where you can basically TIF a residential development or subdivision and use that increment as an incentive to developers. But I just heard about that option a couple weeks ago. How do you structure it?”
Then there is the problem of which needs to come first. People probably won’t locate here without a job in hand. But developers are unlikely to build homes without buyers at the ready. Moore acknowledged that the jobs may have to precede housing, which means some lost revenue.
“We may not be able to capture the property tax revenue, but the income tax with those jobs gives us an opportunity,” said Moore. “But until we can get it all developed, we don’t know what that looks like.”
I’d like to see the properties mowed and cleaned up. It makes Kokomo look terrible. The downtown area is beautiful. But it isn’t very convincing going through any area around town to get there.