Eagle voters show approval for ballot question authorizing $27M in downtown development bonds
81% of residents had voted for the ballot measure with 19% voting against as of 9:15 p.m. Tuesday
Voters in downtown Eagle overwhelmingly approved a ballot question from the town’s Downtown Development Authority requesting permission to borrow up to $27 million in tax increment financing bonds.
As of 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, 81% of residents had voted in favor of the measure and 19% against. Election results will be updated again at midnight.
The bonds would be used for small business grants and other improvements to the downtown area.
Only property owners along Capitol and Broadway streets were eligible to vote on the ballot measure, a group that amounted to just 95 people in last year’s election.
Ballots cast by about one-third of that group, or 37 voters, had been counted as of 9:15 p.m. Tuesday with 30 voting in favor and only seven against.
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The bonds issued by the Downtown Development Authority would be paid back through a public financing method called tax increment financing, or TIF.
The TIF bonds would allow the entity to get up-front funding for grants and improvements to the downtown area, which would then be paid back over a period of 20 years using the future anticipated increase in tax revenue generated by said improvements.
“Whether it’s sales tax or property tax … if your tax collections are $100 a day and the next year you increase that to $200, that tax increment financing, that revenue stream … supports the bond that you’ve gone into debt for,” Eagle Town Manager Brandy Reitter said in August.
This is the same financing method used to create the Downtown Development Authority after a ballot initiative was approved by voters in the November 2020 election.
