Investment in infrastructure three pillars of city resilience

KEY REQUIREMENTS / IMPLEMENTATION FACTORS

Systemwide fiscal regulations should allow special tax assessment and collection at municipal level

Robust property appraisal and land cadaster systems

Betterment Levies: Lessons Learned
INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE
OPPORTUNITIES
CHALLENGES

• Generally allows to raise money off balance sheet without increasing city-wide property taxes
• Tends to align costs of public improvements with those who will benefit the most from such improvements
• Recurrent and reliable source of municipal revenue
• Less complex than TIF as another tax-based LVC
• Cost effective alternative to municipal borrowing with no negative fiscal impact

• Can be a legally complex and time-consuming arrangement
• Requires adoption of special fiscal regulations that are out of control of municipality
• Administration of such tax may be costly
• Delineation of special assessment area often follows jurisdictional borders which causes imperfection in allocation of cost to actual beneficiaries

Betterment Levies: Sampled Project
INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE
Project Description
Local Municipal Corporation is considering complex improvements on the banks of three rivers flowing through the municipality (building embankments for flood protection, sewage treatment, desilting, landscaping, and enhancing connectivity between the banks)
$18 million, concept stage – master planning works started in 2016
Recovery of municipal costs through charging flood premiums on top of construction permitting fees
Riverfront Development, Pune, India
Changes in town-planning codes proposed to allow development in the 25-year flood zones on condition of recovering a flood premium from developers
Upfront costs to be covered by government and the municipal corporation
Flood premium is calculated as 25% of assessed value (“ready reckoner rate”) of land or real property in a respective geographic area of the city