City's Economic Development Committee favors leaving tax abatement program intact for another year

A Decorah City Council committee is in favor of continuing for another year the city's property tax abatement program for new housing construction and major housing renovations.

Four Economic Development Committee members say they are in support of giving property tax abatements with no dollar cap.  Suggestions to impose a $250,000 or $300,000 cap did not win the support of the majority of the committee.

Decorah developers Steve Downing, Barbara Massman, Tade Kerndt and Mike Kelly spoke to the committee in favor of keeping the present program.  Said Downing, "It's been working."  Kerndt, who was on the Decorah City Council when the program started, recalled that there were only four new housing starts within the city limits in 2014, then there were 12 housing starts in 2015, the first year of the program.

City Administrator Chad Bird says there have been a total of 59 new housing starts in the past four year--worth nearly $22 million.

Economic Development Committee members agreed that the tax abatement program is a form of economic development, not necessarily a program for affordable housing.  But committee members Johanna Bergan and Steve Luse urged the city council to take up the affordable housing issue soon, with a work session to be scheduled in January.