Where the TID Money Comes From

The two groups. Subsidized developments: parcels whose developers received TID money. TID 5: the FBI building (3600 S. Lake, PH St. Francis LLC), The Mariner (4000 S. Lake, Bear St. Francis 1 LLC), 42 Hundred on the Lake (4200 S. Lake, St. Francis Property Owner LLC), The Bluffs site (3700 S. Lake, 3700 On the Lake / Campbell) and the 52 unbuilt Hidden Ponds condo units (Hidden Ponds Development LLC); the 36 Hidden Ponds units built before 2015 count as existing homes. TID 3: Asset Control, LLC (3775 S. Packard), paid $38,829 in 2020 to 2022. TID 4 has never paid a developer. A whole parcel counts, from its 2015 value up: when a vacant lot becomes a tower, the land's jump in value comes from the development, so it is counted with the building.

Everything else is every other dollar of increment. Most is existing homes and businesses: the change on parcels already on the roll, including the 2020 and 2024 revaluations and the state's yearly equalization, plus the manufacturing real estate and equipment the state assesses (only the change DOR documents since January 1, 2018). It also holds new buildings nobody was paid to build: 37 parcels from 2016 to 2024, about $10.4M of new assessed value, by the rule in tid5-property (improvements that rose at least $50,000 and 25% faster than the citywide median that year). Most are new or rebuilt houses on E. Sivyer, E. Koenig and E. Crawford Aves.; the largest are Makers Village (2517 E. Norwich) and 3825 S. Kinnickinnic, plus several business buildings on E. Layton and E. Bolivar in TID 4. Last, a small unexplained remainder: DOR's certified increment minus everything counted above. The CSV download keeps all of these as separate columns.

Value, then dollars. For each district and each January 1, DOR's certified increment is split by parcel, using the county's parcel files (assessed values converted to DOR's equalized basis with each year's assessment ratio). Then the increment actually collected the next year, from the audited compilations, is divided in the same proportions. So every measured year adds up to the audit.

TID 3 and TID 5 overlap. TID 5 was laid over most of TID 3 in 2015. TID 3 keeps the value its overlapped parcels had when TID 5 began; DOR lists it as a "frozen overlap value" of $62,224,400 in every statement from 2018 to 2025. Growth after that goes to TID 5. TID 3's 51 parcels outside TID 5 (the 2022 assessment roll codes them TID 3) still grow for TID 3. So TID 3's increment is a mostly fixed amount plus slow growth: $11.5M in 2017, $16.4M in 2025. The frozen part built up between 2006 and 2015, before the parcel files begin; it cannot be split by parcel, so it is counted as existing property ("before parcel records" in the CSV). Ehlers' 2024 report says TID 3's development never happened, and its only incentive was the small Asset Control agreement (counted as subsidized), so none of it is a subsidized development. Some of it could be construction from 2006 to 2015 rather than market growth; the records cannot say.

1. Increment collected, every year from creation: Baker Tilly 2025 TID compilations, "Detailed Schedule of Sources, Uses and Status of Funds, From the Date of Creation," Council packet Sept. 15, 2026: TID 3 pp.138–139, TID 4 pp.149–150, TID 5 p.161, row "Tax increments." TID 3 Note 5 (p.137): the 2009 increment was certified at $41,114,400 by an assessor error (correct: $9,425,400), and $809,570 of the 2010 collection was repaid; that $809,570 is in the unexplained remainder. TID 3 Note 6 (p.137) and p.139 "Developer incentive": Asset Control.
2. 2021 booking error: $309,640 of TID 5's 2021 increment was booked in TID 3 ($148,379) and TID 4 ($161,261) and moved back in 2022 (compilations p.139 and p.150 "Transfers to other funds"; p.161 "Transfers from other funds"). It shows in the unexplained remainder: plus in TIDs 3 and 4, minus in TID 5, zero for all districts together.
3. Certified increment value: DOR TID Statements of Changes 2018–2025 (base, current value, increment, assessment ratio, manufacturing and personal-property lines, prior-year adjustments, TID 3's frozen overlap). Earlier years: Ehlers Joint Review Board Supplemental Reports, Dec. 3, 2024, "Development Assumptions" and "Tax Increment Projection Worksheet" (TID 3 PDF pp.5–6, TID 4 pp.4–5, TID 5 pp.5–6). The January 1, 2026 increment is DOR's 2026 Statement of Changes (tidsoc-2026): TID 3 $16,812,600, TID 4 $31,830,200, TID 5 $189,671,600.
4. Parcels: Wisconsin Statewide Parcel Map files for Milwaukee County, roll years 2015–2024 (St. Francis extracts in County Data/.../Statewide Parcel Datasets/processed); TID 5 membership and values from this site's TID 5 property database; TID 3 and TID 4 membership from the "Districts" column of the 2022 assessment roll (Associated Appraisal, June 8, 2022). 2025 values for the three towers: Start of Parcel Mapping.xlsx (city parcel lookup).
5. Assessment ratios: DOR Statements of Changes 2018–2025; the city's taxing-district sheet for 2016 (0.9859) and 2017 (0.9583); for 2015, the ratio behind the county's "estimated fair market value" on the 2015 roll (0.9390), which reproduces the 2016–2018 ratios exactly.
6. Where the money would have gone: PC-202 Tax Increment Worksheets, levy years 2021–2025, St. Francis page, Col. F (tiw-2021 p.477, tiw-2022 p.477, tiw-2023 p.473, tiw-2024 p.477, tiw-2025 p.475). 2016 and 2017: levies on the city's taxing-district sheet. 2018–2020 are interpolated and years before 2016 use the 2016 shares; both are marked in the table.
7. Incentive recipients: PE-300 annual reports 2018–2025, Section 3/4 developer grants; Ehlers TID 5 cash flow (Nov. 13, 2024); new-development memo. The Landing A-Wing's $3M grant (approved 2025) is outside every district, so its taxes never count as increment and it appears nowhere here.
8. Projections (modeled): the site's own method, restarted from DOR's certified January 1, 2026 values. TID 5 follows new-development/tid_model.py: all property grows 2.5% a year (the rate in Ehlers' 2019 plan) and the rest of the Bluffs and Hidden Ponds arrive on Ehlers' schedule, so the Bluffs still total $94.1M by 2029. TIDs 3 and 4 follow new-development/lifetime.py: the increment grows 2.5% a year to Ehlers' projected closes. Dollars are the increment times $23.43 per $1,000, the combined 2025 rate on the PC-202 ($4,261,577.29 ÷ $181,915,300); that rate is also applied to the certified 2026 value (collected 2027) until the 2026 PC-202 exists. The model had forecast January 1, 2026 lower than DOR certified it: TID 5 $177.6M vs $189.7M, TID 4 $22.8M vs $31.8M, TID 3 $16.8M either way. Restarting from the certified values raises the collections still to come by about $5.3M in TID 5 and $0.9M in TID 4 compared with the unchanged models. Last collections: TID 4 2030, TID 3 2033, TID 5 2036. Existing groups grow with the value behind them; new Bluffs, Hidden Ponds and Triangle value is subsidized. The Triangle is the model's $100M case, on the roll half in 2029 and fully in 2030. 2.5% is below what existing property actually did: the 200 TID 5 parcels on the 2015 roll with no new construction and no incentive rose 51% in equalized value from 2015 to 2024, 4.7% a year (tid5-property parcel values). Low case: Ehlers' own assumptions, 0.4% a year for TID 5 (its Dec. 3, 2024 Tax Increment Projection Worksheet, PDF p.6, "Appreciation Factor: Variable," adds $963,475 on $223.8M of value, 0.43%) and 0% for TIDs 3 and 4 (TID 3 PDF p.6, TID 4 PDF p.5), from the same 2026 starting point. The KPI tiles show both.

• The unexplained remainder is not small in every year. It holds differences between the county file and DOR, business personal property that DOR does not list separately, parcels that left the taxable roll (the city's purchase of the Triangle took $1.58M of 2015 value off TID 5's roll), and prior-year corrections DOR books in a later year. TID 4 has the largest. Its increment jumped from $1.30M to $6.67M on January 1, 2016, then fell back to $4.11M and $2.78M in the next two years. The parcel files show homes and businesses flat that year, and 2016 was not a revaluation year (the city revalued in 2015, 2020 and 2024). The jump could be manufacturing or personal-property swings or an equalization change. DOR's 2016 Statement of Changes or the city's 2016 PE-300 would settle it; neither is online, so it would take a records request.
• Manufacturing and equipment: DOR's statements give these lines each year but never the part of the base that was manufacturing or equipment, and the statements on disk start in 2018. So only the documented change since 2018 is counted ($272,896 of the dollars collected through 2025); any growth in these lines before 2018 stays in the unexplained remainder. Personal property was exempted from January 1, 2024 and DOR took it out of both current value and the base that year (base: TID 4 −$4,859,200, TID 5 −$761,800; Ehlers Dec. 2024 Development Assumptions notes). Because the base's split is not documented, the net effect of that repeal stays in the unexplained remainder.
• The county's 2024 file has no value for three replatted sites: the Bluffs (Sept. 2024), 4698 S. Whitnall Ave. (TID 4, $10.2M) and two Bolivar Ave. lots (TID 4). Their last known value is kept in its group and the difference is in the unexplained remainder.
• January 1, 2025 and 2026 values are not yet in the county parcel file. For 2025 only the towers' values are updated; every other parcel carries its 2024 value, and the rest of that year's change sits in the unexplained remainder.
• January 1, 2026 is split from DOR's own arithmetic, without a parcel file. All three districts rose $56.4M. The assessment ratio fell from 98.33% to 89.63%, which raised the equalized value of everything already assessed by $27.8M; that is spread over the groups by the value behind each. TID 5's non-manufacturing assessed value rose by $19.7M (equalized). The Bluffs and Hidden Ponds were the construction under way, and Ehlers expected $28.8M from them by this date, so the $19.7M is counted as subsidized development; the other $9.1M Ehlers expected is assumed to arrive a year later. The towers' own 2026 values are not known. TID 4's assessed value rose $4.9M with nothing to say whose, so it stays in the unexplained remainder, as do the changes in DOR's prior-year corrections (TID 5 +$4.6M, TID 4 −$1.8M). TID 4's manufacturing line rose $1.7M.
• The subsidized group counts a parcel's whole increment, including land appreciation before construction. Counting only the buildings would move a little from subsidized to everything else.
• Values are equalized, as DOR certifies them. In 2023 the city's assessments ran at 78% of market, so every parcel's equalized value, the towers' included, was about 28% above its assessment.
• The new-development memo puts appreciation at 34% of TID 5's 2025 increment; this page finds about 24% from existing homes and businesses. The memo's figure starts from a $94M construction estimate; here the towers count as whole parcels, which also picks up their land.
• The PE-300 filings for 2022 split that year's $3.34M collection among the three districts differently from the audited compilations (TID 3 $780,761, TID 4 $644,234, TID 5 $1,915,334). The compilations are used.