Richardson City Council work session notes — May 19, 2008

by Andrew Laska of Richardson Echo

RICHARDSON — The Richardson City Council covered the following items at its May 19, 2008 work session.

Tax Increment Finance Zone participation increasing.

Richardson will very likely increase its participation in its Tax Increment Finance (TIF) Zone from 80% to 100%. Currently Richardson can add 80% of real tax increases from properties in its TIF zone into a reimbursement for redevelopment projects in the zone. Richardson will very likely increase this to 100% and deactivate the RISD’s participation in the zone.

Richardson to provide sewer service to a North Dallas property.

Richardson will likely enter into agreement to provide sewer service to a property being developed near the corner of Frankford and Waterview Parkway. This property rests within the Dallas city limits.

Dallas does not have scheduled infrastructure upgrades for that area until 2016. Richardson will provide sewer service until that time because the service area is within 500 feet of Richardson’s service area.

It was mentioned that the development of the property was part of a land swap between UTD and a private entity which was unnamed. UTD currently owns the property that would receive sewer service.

Richardson will update its environmental initiatives.

The City Council received a presentation about Richardson’s current environmental initiatives. Included in this was a partial report on future environmental actions that the city might take. Most notably was the pending establishment of an environmental advisory commission. We will cover the full details of these environmental initiatives in another upcoming article.