Sheridan City Council Hibernates Downtown Development Authority

The Sheridan Downtown Development Authority will be taking a break for now, but it could be back later.

By a 5-2 vote, the Sheridan City Council voted to hibernate the Downtown Development Authority.

DDA’s are government appointed organizations with the authority to increase taxes within its jurisdiction, voted on by the downtown merchants.

It also helps with parts of the downtown district that are in blight, meaning they have fallen into disrepair and are no longer in good health due to age.

The five-member Sheridan DDA was created in 2014, but in the past three months, two members have resigned, and one has expressed their intention to resign.

Councilman Andrew Patceg says those people he has talked to say that Sheridan currently does not have a blight problem, and in the past, those problems were dealt with by the city.

“We’ve shown that in the past, the public works department was capable of providing the same type of support to downtown Sheridan building owners, so the DDA services could easily be considered redundant and superfluous. So what does a DDA offer that our existing departments don’t? The answer is, the authority to raise taxes, through a vote.”

The council also voted to put some money aside, should the DDA ever be resurrected, and if it is not, the money would go back into the general fund.