PARIS – A May 12 Special Town Meeting will, if voters agree, correct what amounts to a clerical error in the High Street Tax Increment Financing District.

The meeting, which gets underway at 6:30 p.m. in the town office conference room, will ask voters to reaffirm their earlier approval of both the High Street TIF district and a second TIF district approved more recently along Route 26 north of Market Square.

The wording for creating the districts remains the same, as dictated by guidelines of the Department of Economic and Community Development. But the High Street TIF district, which originally had 476 acres, was deemed too large. That, along with the 104 acres in the Route 26 TIF, added up to more than the 5 percent of the town’s taxable property allowed under TIF rules, said Town Manager Stephen McAllister.

“It was 12 percent, and now it’s 3.29 percent” if voters approve the changes on May 12.

The High Street TIF thereafter would include only the 17.5 acres of property owned by Maine Machine Products, McAllister said.

Reducing the acreage of land in TIF district designation on High Street doesn’t preclude the town from creating another TIF district on High Street, if other suitable industrial property is developed there, he said. The error came to the town’s attention when the DECD was checking numbers given for the Route 26 TIF, McAllister said.

ggeraghty@sunjournal.com

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