But that idyllic image is at stake. In order to make improvements to the site, the city is asking the schools and county to divert 30 years of tax revenue to the TIF district.

Here’s how a TIF generally works: A city defines a blighted area that it wants to revitalize.

To finance infrastructure projects, a city issues bonds equal to the projected value of new property taxes that will be generated over a 30-year term, essentially by borrowing from taxpayers. It freezes current property tax rates for the duration of a project.

If it participates, the school district does not sell bonds or incur debt, only the city assumes that burden. The risk for the school district, then, is to wait 30 years and see insufficient returns (or no returns at all) if the redevelopment fails, leaving taxpayers saddled with the liability. Such failure is rare; that never happened in Charleston, Prentice said.

New tax revenue collected from these development efforts – the “increase” – is used to pay down the city’s debt. Then, when the mandate expires, all of this new revenue lands in the bank accounts of the TIF project participants.

City plans call for new roads; brand new water and sewer lines; stormwater retention, among other improvements intended to pave the way for the Union Pier redevelopment, which could cost taxpayers about $400 million.

City staff and consultants also estimate an additional $2 billion in private investment, which will result in the construction of hotels, retail stores and restaurants on the site.

But no comprehensive plan has been made public, making the decision the school district and county must make more difficult.

“Without the government providing the delayed public infrastructure that is needed, it will remain a terminal port and it will remain zero dollars in tax revenue for the county, the city and the school district,” Cogswell said at a meeting last . month. In a recent opinion articlehe insisted that TIF projects are not a subsidy to the developer.