A big thank you to County Clerk Cliff Hayes for his continuing efforts to improve transparency in government.

Mr. Hayes just issued a report showing the amount of our 2012 property tax dollars that have been transferred from the county’s various taxing entities to the county’s five Urban Renewal Agencies and the number — although slightly smaller than last year — is still an eye-popper: $10,504,498. In 2011 those same Urban Renewal Agencies took $11.2 million out of the coffers of the county’s taxing entities.

Where did this money come from? Your property tax dollars! The taxing entities who had to give up a portion of their share of your property taxes were Kootenai County ($2.73 million), the city of Coeur d’Alene ($2.96 million), the city of Post Falls ($2.73 million), North Idaho College ($958,000), our Highway Districts ($613,000) and Kootenai Fire and Rescue ($546,000).

How was that money replaced? Each of the taxing entities that lost money allocated to Urban Renewal had to increase their levy rate and that increased your property tax bill.

Your tax bill increased so that $5.54 million tax dollars could be allocated to the Coeur d’Alene Urban Renewal Agency, and $4.25 million could be allocated to the Post Falls Urban Renewal Agency. Hayden URA got $549,000, Spirit Lake URA got $17,000 and Harrison URA got $495.

The next time someone tells you that Urban Renewal doesn’t impact you if you live outside an Urban Renewal District, tell them to take a closer look at the real numbers.

LEN CROSBY

Post Falls