Plain Township fiscal officer John Brandt last month found a revenue-sharing agreement with New Albany that never was enacted.

On Jan. 24, he sent a letter to the city, citing ordinance 0-20-2006, which provides “a compensation agreement to compensate the Plain Township Fire Department for revenue increases paid into the TIF fund. ... We have reviewed our records and do not have a copy of this agreement or the compensation schedule authorized by the ordinance, nor have we received any payments for these TIFs.”

A TIF is an economic development mechanism available to local governments to finance public infrastructure improvements and, in certain circumstances, residential rehabilitation, according to the Ohio Department of Development. A TIF works by locking in the taxable worth of real property at the value it holds at the time the authorizing legislation was approved.

Brandt said he sent the letter requesting compensation for fire department revenue lost through the city’s tax-increment financing (TIF) districts after having found references to the compensation agreement while searching other Franklin County records.

After receiving the letter and reviewing city records, city manager Joseph Stefanov confirmed an agreement was “discussed by council and included in legislation” but never completed.

“Our intention was to sit down with them and draft a compensation agreement,” he said. “But that never happened.”

Stefanov said the city will have to calculate how much it owes to complete the compensation agreement.

The agreement is associated with 10 TIF districts that were created when new subdivisions were built: Balfour Green, Ealy Crossing, The Enclave, Hawksmoor, Richmond Square, Saunton, Tidewater I and II, Upper Clarenton and Wentworth Crossing. The TIF districts, to which city officials often refer as a single district, were created to provide revenue and pay back debt incurred in construction of the Jeanne B. McCoy Community Center for the Arts and the development of a Metro Park in northern Plain Township, Stefanov said.

The McCoy center was built with funding from New Albany, Plain Township and the New Albany-Plain Local School District. The city and township worked together to issue debt so each government did not have to issue debt separately.

“(The city) issued enough debt to cover our contribution and the township’s contribution to the McCoy,” Stefanov said.

The Metro Park being developed north of Walnut Street and east of Schott Road is similar in that it is a collaborative project among New Albany, Columbus and Plain Township, all of which have contributed funding or land to the project.

Township administrator Ben Collins said during the Feb. 1 trustees’ meeting that the township receives revenue from the Windsor subdivision, which is in a TIF district. Collins told Brandt that he has a copy of that compensation agreement at the township offices. New Albany finance director James Nicholson said Plain Township received $183,708 in 2011 from the Windsor TIF, which includes the Windsor, Lansdowne and Souder East subdivisions.

Stefanov said the agreement says the city will “make the township whole” due to lost revenues. It was passed in November 2004 with legislation creating the TIF.

The Windsor TIF was created to pay off McCoy Center debt.

Part of the increased property-tax revenue from the McCoy center, which is now diverted to the city through the TIF, would have gone to the Plain Township Fire Department.

Stefanov said to provide funding for the fire department from the Windsor TIF, the city calculated the amount of revenue the fire department would lose and decided to pay that amount to the township annually. The city will make a similar calculation to determine how much it owes the township for TIFs on the 10 subdivisions, Stefanov said.

Stefanov said the city has two older TIFs: the village center TIF, which pays for projects in the city center, and the Blacklick TIF, which pays debt incurred by installing a sewer system and developing roads in the Blacklick business campus. Neither include a compensation agreement for the township.

“I think we have a pretty good history of working with the township,” Stefanov said. “We’ve partnered on several projects that benefit the community.”

Stefanov said TIF revenue is used for improvements and infrastructure projects, such as construction of leisure trails and roads, but the city also tries to utilize it for community projects that benefit an area larger than the city boundaries.

“We’ve taken an approach to try and provide a benefit to a much larger area or segment of the central Ohio population,” he said.