MOUNT VERNON—Mount Vernon heard Tuesday that as much as $500,000 a year in state dollars will come its way for the next 25 years.
That news came as two other communities, Vancouver and Whitman County, learned that, contrary to an earlier announcement, they would not receive millions in awards from the state Community Economic Revitalization Board.
Tom Trulove, chair of the board, said Tuesday that a data entry error resulted in Vancouver and Whitman County mistakenly being told they had been selected for the Local Infrastructure Financing Tool, or LIFT, program.
But once the error was corrected, Trulove said, the winners were Yakima, Mount Vernon and Puyallup.
“Fortunately for the city of Mount Vernon, we were in the initial funded ranking list, and we were in the final funded ranking list,” Mount Vernon Finance Director Alicia Huschka said Tuesday.
“We are just so pleased that the CERB (Community Economic Revitalization Board) liked our project,” she said.
The LIFT program allows communities to invest a portion of state tax money in public infrastructure. In Mount Vernon, Huschka said the city will get up to $500,000 a year of sales and use tax and property tax, that otherwise would have gone to the state, to fund downtown redevelopment.
The state money cannot be used to pay for planned flood protection measures, but can be spent on a waterfront promenade, urban trail, park facilities, a parking garage and other changes planned for downtown, Huschka said.
She said the city will match the $500,000 in state money to make annual payments of $1 million on a $14 million bond the city expects to get for the project. Over time, with interest, Huschka said the state’s $500,000 a year for 25 years, or $12.5 million total, will end up paying back about half of the $14 million bond.
“This is a huge victory for Mount Vernon in terms of putting together our financing package,” Huschka said.
To fund the flood protection project, which is necessary for the rest of downtown redevelopment to take place, she said the city is pursuing funding from the state Legislature and other county and state grants.
Mount Vernon also applied for the LIFT program last year, said Huschka, but was not a winner.
The $500,000 per year of LIFT funding awarded to Mount Vernon this round is the maximum amount, not a guarantee. Huschka said that money will come from new sales and use tax and property tax generated in downtown Mount Vernon.
If state tax revenues do not increase by at least $500,000 a year, then the city will get less. But that should not be a problem, Huschka said. She projects that the state’s portion of tax revenues will increase by $165 million over the next 30 years and to well exceed the $500,000 mark even in 2011, the first year in which tax increases will be measured.
* Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or .
