What's a PID?

Tonight I will be addressing a group of citizens that reside in the Park Place addition (Monopoly Streets) .  The meeting will start at 7:30 at the Elzie Odom Recreation Center.  The reason for the meeting is to discuss forming a Public Improvement District or PID.  Now what a PID does is allow a neighborhood to essentially get a loan from the city to make improvements.  In this case it will be a stone wall that surrounds their neighborhood.  The wooden fence that encases their neighborhood is showing wear and it is only a matter of time before it starts to fall down and will need to be replaced.  The problem is, when an individual citizen makes this determination, you will have new fence and then old fence and a patchwork effect will identify your neighborhood.  If a PID is established, then the stone wall will be constructed all at once and look uniform throughout it's life.  It will give the neighborhood a professional upgrade, therefore raising the property values of the entire addition. 

Now the city can't go around putting up walls for everyone.  So how is this paid for?  Well, each of the houses in the addition has an increase in their annual property tax.  The amount of increase is subject to how the PID is constructed.  In this addition there are 178 houses.  If the cost of the wall is $500,000 then each house will own $2,800.  If the tax assessment is constructed for a ten year period, the cost per house will be $280 annually.  If it is constructed for 15 years it is $187.

Now how do you form a PID?  A committee will be formed of citizens within the addition.  This committee will be tasked with getting signatures from each of the households within the addition.  If the committee in Park Place is successful in accumulating signatures of 90 houses or over 50% of the households.  Then the petition is submitted to the City Council for approval and the funds are allocated and the PID is established.  That's the nuts and bolts of a PID. 

Now as you can imagine some citizens are more involved in their community than others.  As you know, some people take more pride in their homes than others.  Some people are a little more cash strapped than others.  This is where the rub is to establishing a PID.  We still live in a democracy, and you have freedom of speech.  The city isn't making you establish a PID.  This is a concerted effort by citizens to improve their neighborhood.  As a collective body, they either want to do this or they don't.  They will decide.  Grand Prairie currently has 15 PIDs that have been established.