The Atlanta City Council gave its approval on Monday to an agreement settling the monetary dispute between the city, the Atlanta BeltLine and Atlanta Public Schools. It was approved by a vote of 13-2.
The dispute centered on the amount of funding owed in a previous agreement to the school system. That agreement required the city — in exchange for using a portion of school taxes to build its parks and trails along the BeltLine — to make $162 million in a series of fixed payments back to APS. The payments were intended to be made using the taxes collected with the Beltline tax allocation district, or TAD.
The major terms under the new agreement are:
• The latest agreement represents a 42 percent savings over the life of the intergovernmental agreement (IGA), as amended, from approximately $174,936,302.00 to $100,767,577.00
• APS will receive $73,500,000.00 in Payments in Lieu of Taxes, known as PILOTs, between 2017 and 2031. This amount represents a 55 percent reduction in PILOTs.
• APS will receive $14,767,577.00 in past due PILOTs, of which $9.1 million was paid on December 29, 2015.
• APS will also receive a parcel of land and an additional $10 million on July 1, 2017.