State okays expansion of Poland TIF

POLAND – The state has given the town the “okay” to expand the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district in the southern part of town.

The district is associated with the Poland Spring Bottling Company, and the amended boundaries were needed to extend the new sewer and water pipes from the Poland Spring Bottling Company to the intersection of Route 121 and Route 26 in the southern part of town.

“We’ve been verbally told by John Cleveland, our development consultant, that the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development approved our amended TIF district,” said Town Manager Dana Lee. “There also is what I call a menu of things that you can do with TIF money generated in that boundary area, and we amended that too.

“Both the town and our engineering firm started working on the project without having the approval,” continued Lee. “But we were told all along that the state’s ‘okay’ was a no-brainer and that they didn't think there would be any problem, but you never know. However, in order to stay on our time frame, we had to roll the dice and it came up good.”

Lee said that the official name for the menu is “development program.” Poland increased the menu from five to 20 choices.

“The state may have told us to take some of them out,” he added. “But it really wasn't a big gamble – I’m a low risk guy. We wanted to include as many as we could to leave our options open, because the process of amending the TIF is not easy.”

Examples of menu items are acquisition of property and putting up buildings on acquired property, Lee said.

“So, this is highly theoretical and I’m not promoting this, but theoretically, if there was a rundown building within the TIF district,” Lee continued, “we could acquire the parcel and take down the building and put up a spec building and lease it out for an employer.

“However, I want the people of Poland to know that any decision regarding the use of TIF funds would have to go before them at town meeting,” said Lee. “This is not a menu that the selectmen and I can pick from and do what we want. It's still a matter of appropriation. If at the town meeting people said, ‘we don't want you to buy property,’ we would not buy property. There is a huge element of local control.

“So now I can sign the contract with the engineering firm, who has been working on good faith to this point,” added Lee.