Heber City Manager Matt Brower expressed optimism about the community’s future last week while discussing downtown plans with the City Council.

“As we speak, we are seeing a very dynamic transformation in the city center,” he said.

He mentioned that events at the Ideal Theater are sold out, with 50 to 75 people waiting outside the door. The Timanogas Valley Theater has a full schedule this fall and winter. And construction is well underway on Heber City’s bandshell between 200 South — which is being converted into a street better suited to community gatherings and festivals — and Main Street Park.

“We already have a synergy. People are coming downtown who have never been there before,” Brower said.

Now, Heber city officials are preparing to approach the town council and Wasatch County School District again to get them involved in the City of Heber Community Reinvestment Agency, a tax increment program that would allow all taxing entities to continue receiving the property taxes they currently receive from the city center, while 75% of the tax increments from that area would be used for projects in the city center.

It is hoped that by the time the agreement expires after 20 years, tax revenues in the region will be high enough to make the investment worthwhile.

Heber City has already presented that plan to the county and school district, with moderate success. Now, as they prepare to present the plan again to elected bodies, Heber City officials are defining projects, refining details about the potential downtown project and hoping the county and school district will agree it’s worth the effort.

“Think in your mind about the meetings, about our messages, about what we want to say and how we want to say it,” Brower said. “We will ask them in November of this year to vote on these interlocal agreements. We need to have these interlocal agreements passed by December 31, 2024.”

Mayor Heidi Franco believes the city is one step closer to supporting the county and school districts by more precisely defining the projects the CRA will focus on.

“I’ve always insisted that we need to accurately itemize the projects and the costs to the county and the school district. We haven’t done that for several years, even though we’ve been trying to do it all along, because we really need to show the county and the school district that that’s exactly how the money is being spent,” Franco said. “We’ve talked a lot about the projects and the costs to them, but we didn’t actually itemize them until earlier this year. … We need to show them in good faith that that’s exactly how the money is being spent and put that in the agreement.”

Another obstacle is a legal dispute over whether the school district or county should send its own representatives to the CRA advisory board, she said. Those differences still need to be resolved, but overall she believes there is common ground.

“The county and the school district are not against any of the projects. They all want parking downtown. We all want revitalization and we know that 10% of the CRA has to go to affordable housing, which we all want and are all committed to,” Franco said. “It’s just that we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars.”

She said she could not blame community leaders for being concerned about the project, but was confident they would consider the redevelopment and the associated increase in tax revenue worthwhile.

While the end of 2024 is not a firm deadline for the school district and county to sign the CRA, and Heber City could potentially pursue redevelopment without the municipal tax increases, Brower said downtown projects would take much longer and the CRA would lose millions of dollars in revenue.

“If the county and district do not reach interlocal agreements with the agency by December 31, 2024, the property taxes generated by Smith’s $40 million investment in her new grocery store will no longer be able to be used as an increment in the CRA,” he said. “Heber could continue to move forward with downtown revitalization even without the tax increase, but the rate of revitalization would be much slower. The CRA partnership would provide a significant return on investment.”

In anticipation of next month’s meetings, he said, at the request of school board members, the city is working on a website with basic information about the CRA.

“The city has been working with the county and school district for nearly two and a half years, asking for their support for the interlocal agreements,” he said. “Almost every request from the county and district has already been incorporated into the interlocal agreements. The city will continue to review specific requests from the county and district.”

Brower said the city plans to meet with the county on Sept. 4 and with the school board on Sept. 28.