Mayor Andre Dickens is dialing back his bid to extend the timelines for all eight of Atlanta’s tax allocation districts (TADs) to fund his $5.5 billion Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative, while promising greater accountability and community input.
City Councilmember Michael Julian Bond on Monday introduced new legislation drafted by the administration that omits the Beltline and Perry-Bolton TADs from Dickens’ push to extend TAD expiration dates through 2056. Instead, they would sunset on schedule in 2030 and 2041, respectively.
The proposal now before the Atlanta City Council covers the other six — the Westside, Eastside, Campbellton Road, Hollowell-Martin Luther King Jr., Metropolitan Parkway and Stadium Area TADs.
TADs are still the core funding mechanism for the Dickens administration’s Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative. Each TAD collects the growth in property-tax revenue — above a baseline set when the districts are created — for the city to spend on infrastructure, housing, and redevelopment projects within the districts.
That revenue would otherwise go to Atlanta Public Schools, Fulton County, and the city’s general fund. Members of the APS board and the Fulton County Commission have raised concerns about the loss of tax revenue from extending the TADs, which receive half their funding from APS, with another 25% each coming from Fulton and the city.
The proposed ordinance would also establish a Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative Trust Fund to bring housing, grocery stores, health clinics, and other community supports to targeted neighborhoods outside of the TAD districts.
The trust fund would be “a dedicated, city council-controlled pool of money targeting our most distressed neighborhoods with community advisory groups guiding development, with every award tied to the same impact framework outcomes,” Dickens’ chief of staff, Courtney English, said at a virtual press conference before Bond introduced the TAD-extension legislation.
Relatedly, the legislation introduces anti-displacement programs, and community oversight and accountability measures — provisions missing from the wholesale TAD-extension legislation the administration failed to pass last year.
Some TAD spending, particularly in the most lucrative Beltline, Westside, and Eastside TADs, has been criticized as a subsidy to developers that fuels real estate speculation and displaces legacy residents and businesses. Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development arm, disburses the TAD revenue.
The new proposal says TAD dollars used to fund Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative projects must meet at least one of three performance goals: displacement prevention, neighborhood stabilization, or wealth building. That’s a departure from how the city has been measuring TAD success, based on dollars deployed, buildings built, and jobs created.
“This is a fundamentally different piece of legislation,” English told reporters on Monday. “A project will not receive funding unless it improves upon those key metrics of neighborhood health. It does us no good to invest in a neighborhood if the folks who have been there can’t afford to stay there.”
“This is not just a reporting change,” Dickens told council members Monday evening. “This is a values change.” The mayor said the new legislation responds to concerns about transparency, accountability, and anti-displacement protections, after months of feedback from city council members, residents, the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative Commission, and Invest Atlanta.
Still $5.5 billion?
The Beltline TAD has generated $864 million tax increment revenue since its 2005 start date — far more than the other seven districts. Much of that money has been used to build out the Beltline Trail. Allowing the Beltline TAD to expire in 2030 would cut an important funding source for light rail along the Eastside Trail, after the mayor retracted his support for that last year.
All told, the eight TADs have raised almost $2 billion in revenue since each was created 20 or more years ago. Of that, the Perry-Bolton TAD has generated over $125 million since its 2002 launch.
English said dropping the Beltline and Perry-Bolton TADs, so that only six TAD timelines are extended to 2056 won’t reduce the $5.5 billion scope of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative.
When the city was pushing to extend all eight TADs, it estimated the total tax increment revenue generated would be between $10 billion and $12 billion, with about half used to fund the new neighborhood initiative. English said the administration estimates the six TADs could still raise between $5 billion and $7 billion, with most going to the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative.
The new TAD-extension legislation, he added, empowers the city to explore alternative public funding options. For instance, it proposes creating new special services districts, where additional property taxes are levied on commercial properties in certain areas. That money, unlike TAD funding, could be spent outside the TADs’ boundaries.
It also proposes allocating upwards of $7 million from the city’s general fund in fiscal year 2027 to local nonprofits focused on displacement prevention, home renovations, and improving lower-income residents’ credit scores.
Looming TAD audit
Dickens’ TAD-extension legislation dropped less than three weeks before the Atlanta Auditor’s Office is set to release a report on how TAD revenue has been used and monitored. The office hadn’t audited the TADs since 2012, when it found the city and Invest Atlanta had failed to track whether the eight TADs’ redevelopment goals were being met.
Several city council members have said they want to review the audit before voting on TAD extensions.
But Dickens said at the May 18 council meeting that his office has reviewed a draft of the audit, and that the proposed TAD-extension ordinance takes into account the few recommendations it makes, which pertain to transparency and accountability.
“The forthcoming audit does not allege any wrongdoing, corruption, malfeasance, or anything,” Dickens said. “What it identifies is that there is a need for stronger accountability structures, clearer measurable goals, more consistent reporting, and greater transparency around how outcomes are tracked and communicated to the public.”
If passed by the Atlanta City Council, the TAD extensions would still need to be approved by Atlanta Public Schools and the Fulton County Commission.