Despite some misgivings about using tax incentives to promote energy conservation, the Lincoln City Council on Monday approved a redevelopment agreement for a new truck stop in west Lincoln.

The planned truck stop is the subject of a family dispute. One side of the Shoemaker family is now slated to receive up to $950,000 in tax increment financing to build a truck stop across the street from the existing Shoemaker's truck stop.

Tax increment financing, or TIF, is an urban renewal financing tool in which property taxes are diverted for as long as 15 years and funneled into public improvements to help the project. For this project, most of the money will be used to improve the intersection and add turning lanes near the truck stop at West O and Northwest 48th streets.

But the redevelopment agreement also allows as much as $100,000 to be used for energy conservation, and some council members questioned whether that was a "public improvement."

Mayor Chris Beutler's administration considers energy conservation a public benefit and has added it to its list of allowable uses of TIF. Councilman Jon Camp urged caution in the use of "precious dollars," considering the city's long list of infrastructure needs.

Don and Randy Shoemaker own the land on which the existing truck stop sits. Dave Shoemaker and his father, Harley, plan to open the new truck stop.

Attorney Peter Katt, who represents Don and Randy Shoemaker, questioned why the project didn't go through the usual preliminary plat process - during which the city's development standards are applied. He called it a "significant departure from how the city has traditionally approved projects."

When Councilman Dan Marvin suggested Katt's clients had a "vested interested in throwing a monkey wrench" into the process, Katt said, "My clients are not afraid of fair competition (but) in order for competition to be fair, everyone has to play by the same rules."

City Planning Director Marvin Krout said a preliminary plat was not required, and minimum flood corridor requirements were waived, as allowed when there is no defined bed and bank. He said the project was not given special treatment.

In other business, the council:

* Approved plans to build a new Catholic school, and eventually, church, as part of a southeast Lincoln development called the Wilderness at Yankee Hill between 70th and 84th streets. St. Michael Catholic Church in Cheney plans to build an $8.5 million, K-8 school southeast of 70th Street and Yankee Hill Road.

* Approved a plan to use as much as $2 million in tax increment financing - still being generated from an office building at 10th and K streets on Lincoln Mall - to beautify a corridor around the Capitol, particularly Centennial Mall to the north, in phases over almost a decade.

The mall, built in 1968, is a series of stepped terraces with six fountains. Two fountains have been filled in and one is not operational. In the past decade, two plans for rehabbing the mall have been put together, but didn't materialize.

City officials are looking at making the mall a sloped ramp, rather than stepped terraces, so it's more accessible to wheelchairs and bicycles. The plan also calls for rehabbing one block to the south and east of the Capitol, on J Street and Goodhue Boulevard.

* Approved the sale of two acres of property and the Carnegie Library at 27th and Center streets to Matt Talbot Soup Kitchen & Outreach. Matt Talbot is being displaced by Assurity's planned new headquarters.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.