The announcement in the April 20 edition of The Press that the Post Falls urban renewal agency was rebating $3.3 million in collected tax dollars to the various tax districts in our city and county was welcome news. The members of the Post Falls City Council should be congratulated for not extending the life of the East Post Falls urban renewal district, as the URA had requested, and the URA’s board should be congratulated for their quick action in rebating this and the additional $2.2 million in tax dollars that they rebated in 2009.

Now comes the hard part. We all need to heed the advice recently provided by Dr. David Adler to be actively involved in how our elected officials utilize these funds, and demand that the actions taken by those responsible for the use of this money are open and honest. We also need to request that The Press help us monitor the uses to which these monies are put.

More importantly, we need to reflect on the fact that one local agency — an agency not governed by elected officials or directly or indirectly responsible to the public or our elected representatives — collected more than $5.5 million in excess tax dollars over the past several years. Not only were these tax dollars collected, but they essentially sat in URA accounts and had no positive impact on our lives or on the delivery of services to the public over that time.

Dollars diverted to the URA over this period were lost to the taxing entities providing the services we need as a community (fire, police, education and other services). The lost dollars were made up by increased levies on homeowners and the owners of commercial property by those taxing entities to enable continue their normal operations. Once increased, there is little chance that levy rates will be reduced, particularly in a time of stagnant property values. The true loss of these dollars, although now being rebated to the tax districts, is the loss to the taxpayers — each of us who owns a home, a business property or a small business — who have shouldered the increased levy rates required to maintain our community services and will not, in fact, receive any sort of rebate.

LEN CROSBY

Post Falls