Two stories in the IBJ hitting our mail box today drew our attention. We'll be brief in comment.
The first reports another "public/private" development scheme downtown. The financial proposal looks a little "smoke-and-mirrorish," but we won't go into that now. (Though maybe it would be appropriate to prepare large signs for city officials' offices carrying definitions of the words incentive, subsidy and bribe.)
Officials are quoted as liking the project because it will "...give the city control of enough parking to support the future development of the Market Square Arena site..." Has that been the problem?
The MSA site has been off the tax rolls for 35 years, including 10 years since the building was razed. This project apparently will add another $18.5 million (present assessment ?) to the unknown but huge total value of untaxed, city-owned real estate, increasing the burden on individual homeowners. Is that a situation needing expansion?
The second item is a letter to the editor signed by two men promoting federal legislation and describing the advantages of wind and sun as energy sources.
They say, in part, "This country spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually importing foreign oil....We believe that money should stay here in the United States and be used to put Americans to work."
We agree. We do wonder why the men so easily miss - and fail to mention - the thought that drilling our own oil reserves could significantly take care of both problems, at least until proposed alternative sources are proven practical and capable of being significantly self-supporting. Nor do they make any mention of the potential benefits of nuclear energy.
They do refer to "...energy-efficiency ideas ready to be unleashed with the incentives contained in this bill. (Our emphasis. See above reference.)
The letter is signed with business titles indicating direct interest in "sunshine" companies. We'd like to see some of that light turned on the "incentives" - tax dollars - being handed out, currently and prospectively, for windmills and sunshine traps.
Let's cut to the chase with respect to properties that are not included as taxable in Center Township and then let us total up the TIF properties as well and then let us include the city owned property all of which are off the books and therefore being supported by local property taxes. If we did a comprehensive study of all of those what is the total tax avoidance?
Posted by: Vox Populi | June 16, 2009 at 12:04 AM