ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ”

While not binding, the map would provide a consistent policy to a commonly used development incentive in the city that historically has been set by the whims of a neighborhood’s alderman.

“I think we need to recognize it is light years ahead of where we were just a few years ago,” Alderman Scott Ogilvie said at a committee hearing last month, calling decisions on incentives in the past “ad hoc.”

In the city, tax abatement is a frequently granted developer incentive that exempts from real estate taxes a portion of added property value created by new investment. Homebuyers and rehabbers can also apply for abatement, but some abatements are approved even in well-off neighborhoods. Critics say that’s an unnecessary incentive in a city hurting for revenue.

The city has spent the last few years re-evaluating how it doles out developer tax breaks after credit rating agencies cited their prolific use here and a city-commissioned report found hundreds of millions in forgone revenue over the last 15 years due to incentives.

Last year, abatements resulted in almost $30 million in forgone revenue for St. Louis. More than half of that would have gone to St. Louis Public Schools, which has no say on abatements.

Much of that figure comes from uncollected property taxes on larger commercial or industrial projects. But, due to the sheer number of residential abatements approved over the years, a not-insignificant portion of that figure comes from residential property tax breaks.

The map, which is only meant to apply to residential projects below $1 million, generally lays out longer periods of property tax breaks — a decade or more — in the city’s weakest neighborhoods, typically north of downtown but also in some south city neighborhoods. The map recommends wealthier neighborhoods in the central corridor and South Side receive no tax abatement or only up to five years at 50 percent.

Staff at the St. Louis Development Corp., the city’s economic development arm, used federal mortgage and census data to develop the map delineating how much tax abatement should be offered and where. Income, mortgage activity, vacancy, rents and home loan amounts in each area were weighted and compared to the average across the St. Louis area.

Areas where staff feels residential tax abatement isn’t needed have income, mortgage values and other metrics that are equal to or above the regional average. A sliding scale recommends higher amounts of tax abatement based on how far an area is below the regional average for income and other criteria.

Residential property abatement requests in much of the city north of Delmar Boulevard would receive recommendations for at least 15 years of tax abatement. Up to 25 years of tax abatement would be recommended — the first decade at 100 percent and the last 15 years at 50 percent — in the poorest areas of north St. Louis, as well as splotches of some south St. Louis neighborhoods.

The 25-year category was added after prodding from Alderman Brandon Bosley, who represents portions of Hyde Park, College Hill, Fairground and other northern neighborhoods.

A previous version of the map had contained recommendations for only 95 percent property tax abatement in even the lowest-income neighborhoods. That followed a shift in SLDC policy last year to stop offering 100 percent abatement in many cases in an attempt to collect at least some new property tax revenue from development.

“Every single thing that everyone else has gotten we want the opportunity to get all of those things and I think right now is not the time to limit,” Bosley said at a Housing, Urban Development and Zoning (HUDZ) committee hearing Wednesday. “If you want to limit anything, limit that stuff on the South Side.”

For projects seeking incentives larger than $1 million, SLDC staff will continue to evaluate those on a case-by-case basis using a more rigorous analysis that looks at a project’s potential return to the city versus the potential tax revenue given up via incentives.

SLDC Director Otis Williams told aldermen last month that the map for residential abatements “is not an absolute. It’s a guide.” But Williams said his staff will now have to justify any recommendations that stray from the guidelines laid out in the map.

Even if it is adopted, city legislators could still override the recommendations from professional staff and the Land Clearance for Redevelopment board, which vets abatement requests first. LCRA board member Matthew McBride, after he and his colleagues were briefed on the new map last week, asked whether there would be any policy to keep aldermen from deviating from staff and the LCRA’s abatement recommendations.

“I can’t promise you that,” Williams responded.

Meanwhile, the map’s adoption at the Board of Aldermen could run into political squabbles. It was never adopted by the aldermanic Neighborhood Development committee, which reviews the vast majority of smaller abatement requests.

It had been scheduled to be heard by that committee last week, but Chairman Shane Cohn decided to put off the presentation, saying Williams and a key SLDC staff member weren’t there at the beginning of the hearing to present it.

In an interview, Cohn said the map “has everything to do with my committee,” and he’s not sure why only the HUDZ committee has reviewed and adopted it before sending it to the full board.

“I think the Neighborhood Development committee should have the opportunity to review it and adopt it as well,” said Cohn, who represents parts of Dutchtown and Carondelet.

Alderman Joe Roddy, who chairs the HUDZ committee, said he’s “tried to involve (Cohn) in the process” of adopting the map but that a hearing had not been rescheduled in Cohn’s committee.

“At some point you have to bring it to a conclusion,” said Roddy, who represents parts of the Central West End and Forest Park Southeast.