Meyerland TIRZ

[Highrise Tower]

TIRZ pitched as answer for Meyerland infrastructure woes

https://communityimpact.com/houston/bellaire-meyerland-west-university/government/2021/09/08/tirz-pitched-as-answer-for-meyerland-infrastructure-woes/

It was on July 14 during the Brays Bayou Association’s monthly meeting that its president, Charles Goforth, presented to the neighborhood group an option for revitalizing the Meyerland area’s aging infrastructure: a tax increment reinvestment zone.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Goforth said in an interview with Community Impact Newspaper. “Being somebody that is born and raised here in the community ... I keep looking at the state of the infrastructure, especially in the older parts of Meyerland.”

Goforth’s vision for a TIRZ comes mainly because projects through both a Harris County Flood Control District bond program and those under the ongoing $480 million Project Brays flood damage reduction initiative have not been enough, Goforth said.

Tapping into neighborhood tax bases along the Brays Bayou watershed, like Meyerland, is key to making significant headway on those projects, he said.

Goforth, a realtor in the Meyerland area, estimates that the more than 2,300 homes in Meyerland constitute a tax base of more than $1 billion.

Currently, the two nearest TIRZs to the Meyerland area are being considered in an annexation process—TIRZ 16, also called the Uptown Houston TIRZ, and TIRZ 25, also known as the Hiram Clarke/Fort Bend TIRZ.