Olney City Council Briefs
OEDC chief briefs Council on tax zone Olney Economic Development Corporation executive director Tom Parker briefed the City Council on progress on creating a tax incremental reinvestment zone (TIRZ) along Main Street and State Highway 79 to fund revitalization of downtown and infrastructure repair.
Mr. Parker spoke to the Council at its May 28 meeting about his efforts to define the area included in the TIRZ, where the revenue collection and improvements would take place.
The OEDC also plans to have a community meeting to discuss the plan, he said. The TIRZ must include “a certain amount of housing .. raw land, industry in it,” he said.
Under the proposal, any additional ad valorem tax revenue created by TIRZ activities would be used to pay for improvements within the TIRZ zone.
The funds would be swept into a separate account for a certain period of time, “normally up to 40 years,” Mr. Parker said. “So it’s 10 years to get it started, 10 years for maturity, 10 years for expansion and then 10 years of sort of the wheels are running and it’s managing itself.”
The OEDC was considering whether to include the Olney Airport and Olney Lake in the TIRZ footprint, he said.
“The idea is to prime the economic pump of putting resources back into town,” Mr. Parker told the Council. “We’ve talked about infrastructure for homes and for businesses and things coming in. It’s just not been a vehicle to do that.”
The five to 15-member board would decide how to spend the funds, he said.
The City would be able to borrow against projected TIRZ revenue “so that projects don’t have to wait to save enough money to be able to do things,” he said.
“So it gives us the ability to take bigger bites into the infrastructure and the community development that we haven’t had in the past,” he said.
The plan also includes attracting new businesses to town to try to increase the tax base. Any additional revenue generated by the TIRZ could be used to pay for utility lines, streets and other infrastructure for new housing, the board said.
City votes to abandon Ave. L for hospital plan The City Council voted to abandon a portion of South Avenue L starting on Dec. 1 to make way for the new Olney Hamilton Hospital.
The vote was the first of two that must take place to finalize a plan to allow OHH to build over the portion of South Avenue L between Hamilton Street and the alley south of Main Street.
The hospital owns the properties on either side of the street that would be closed.
OHH board president Dale Lovett told the Council that the finalizing the closure of the road will allow the hospital’s architects and general contractor to finalize plans.
The plans call for a two-story hospital to be built across Hamilton Street from the current hospital.
The existing hospital will likely be demolished to make way for patient parking and other features after the new facility is built, OHH officials said.
“We did put December 1 in there for our effective date and we believe that on that date we will be moving forward,” Mr. Lovett told the Council.
The hospital sold $27 million in general obligation bonds earlier this year to fund the project, which is expected to commence later this year, OHH Administrator Michael Huff said.
City lifts Phase 2 drought restrictions The Olney City Council voted to lift Phase 2 drought restrictions at its May 28 meeting, after hearing a report that its reservoir at Lake Cooper has nearly reached capacity. The Council voted to move to Phase 1 restrictions, which bar residents from watering their lawns between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.
“Right now the elevation is at 1,140 (feet) which puts us at 88 percent, full capacity,” Public Works Director Michael Jacoba said. “We are up high enough to where we can come out of Phase 2 and get on with our lives, watering our grass and swimming pools.”
The City enacted Phase 2 restrictions of its Water Conservation and Drought Contingency Plan on July 15, 2022 and began drawing water from Lake Kickapoo to fill the reservoir at Lake Cooper as the result of a heat wave and lack of rain. The lake level at the time was 1,134 feet, or 66 percent full.
Phase 2 restricts lawn watering and other outdoor watering and washing to Saturday, Monday and Thursday for odd-numbered street addresses or addresses south of State Highway 114.