Beckett & Raeder was engaged by the City of Alpena Downtown Development Authority in 2022 to address several development plan and tax increment financing plan issues.  Since its inception in 1980, the DDA district was expanded through three amendments in 1985, 1988, and 2004. In early 2022 the assessor notified the DDA that parcels in the various expansion areas didn't match the legal descriptions of the districts and there was a question regarding their inclusion in the tax increment financing plan. Further, the DDA desired to expand the district a fourth time to include the balance of the Chisholm Street corridor. 

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To resolve the legal descriptions of the respective districts we engaged a local professional surveyor to reconstruct and tie together all of the districts.  In turn, we were able to assign parcels within each district and use this information to prepare the tax increment financing revenue forecasts with four different base years.

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The next phase was the 2022 expansion of the district to include the balance of the corridor.  The expansion process was done concurrently with the adoption of the development plan and tax increment financing plan. Because of the "opt-out" provisions included in Act 57 of 2018, BRI assisted the DDA with negotiations with Alpena County resulting in a revenue sharing agreement.

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In 2023, both the amended and restated development plan and tax increment financing plan, and the district expansion were approved and adopted.