The Route 1 improvements are an excellent opportunity for Falmouth, and they won’t increase property taxes by one penny.
Thanks to careful fiscal planning, we will fund the improvements through a special account, called a TIF, created for exactly this purpose: to improve Route 1’s business district. We can cover borrowing costs from the TIF, because we expect district property values to grow by an average of 1.25 percent annually.
The math for the $11.7 million project adds up, with money left over. We’ve already raised $5.2 million and, after paving Falmouth Road, the current balance is $2.3 million. That leaves $9.4 million, and even conservative projections predict a TIF well above this project’s cost, about $11.7 million. In fact, the only way we would fall short would be if property values decreased, which hasn’t happened in this current recession, the worst since the Great Depression.
Bo Bigelow
Falmouth
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