Main Street is part of the Urban Renewal District. This is a taxing district with specific boundaries and projects which funds collected can be used to complete. Projects which urban renewal can fund are determined by ORS 457.
Urban renewal is funded by tax increment financing (TIF). When an urban renewal plan is adopted, the county assessor calculates the total assessed value of the area and establishes this value as the “frozen base” for the area.
Taxes from that frozen base continue going to all of the taxing jurisdictions. Growth above the base is called the “increment”. Taxes from the increment, called tax increment revenue, go to the urban renewal agency for projects within the urban renewal area.
This does not increase your taxes. The tax rate a property owner will pay inside the Urban Renewal District will not change simply because of TIF. TIF is only collected on properties inside the district boundaries. The allocation of where that tax funding goes is what changes inside an urban renewal district. This is only for a set period of years.
The Main Street Update is the last large project to be funded by our Urban Renewal District before it sunsets in 2027.