Tax-Increment-Financing(2)

I read the executive summary in the above report. I also searched this am and a bit tonight  on both success and failure stories regarding TIF. One must remember that each Community or City employing a TIF is unique.

Across the Country you can find great debates raging on many aspects of the program with some States trying to reign in the practice.  In some cases has been overreach by TIF proponents. This scheme and  it  is a scheme surfaced in the 50’s.

It’s original intent was to revive blighted areas. There are arguments put forward that such and such development would not occur without a TIF. That is used alot and disputed by opponents.

Then there are school districts that have sued for loss of tax revenue. The standard comeback across the land seems to be “Well it was just woods there with a bunch of wet areas , whadda ya call em, vernal pools” “You got no revenue from that but just wait till the TIF expires and you will share in the bounty!”

You can’t “lose ” what you were not receiving prior. It’s really something the back and forth. In Vermont several Communities had to give back some significant monies.

http://vtdigger.org/2013/05/15/municipalities-pay-back-some-money-over-tif-dispute/

While nosing around a couple of months ago I also read the three links below with interest.

http://www.vermonttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/RH/20130423/NEWS01/704239854

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20101126/NEWS03/711269889/1004/NEWS03

announcementtouserails(4)

Can you imagine what a linked bike trail would bring in revenue over shipping odd chunks of granite ?

The project that the granite was destined for in Florida is a vital dike system containing Lake Okeechobee, which has and could again fail, causing a devastating flood. It’s quite a story.

I read that granite train story as one where proponents got all juiced over what they construed as a “big deal”

It was a bust. It only served to get RR folks all jazzed up and screwed a major bike trail in planning.

The music man’s magic touch gone woefully awry.

I have not seen wholesale changes in the  Town Board players over the last twenty five years or so. It’s the same folks really, the same opinion makers. In fact the major ones  can recite their Community accomplishment’s and often do preface their weighing in with long recitations. I have received some of those emails but deleted them as frankly I found them embarrassing, for the sender.

Puffery. Some wield it with no shame at all. I hope you did all those things for the Community and yourself. The work in my view is sullied when one tries to “use it”

The Great Bay Kids groundbreaking is tomorrow morning at 10am at their new home on Epping Rd.

What the heck was everyone doing? What was Sylvia doing as it seems to me I sense wagons circling around the Planning Department. It can’t be that those that put up signs and blustered over Great Bay Kids at the Rec  are now all worked up about the woods.

So we hired a gun  and now he and this TIF scheme will probably go down in flames. That is what I am feeling and am quite surprised that anyone any insider( excluding Nancy Belanger) thinks otherwise. Yes there were meetings, there is one tonight downtown. I can’t go I am exhausted and am not sharing the cause of that, but believe me it’s off to bed soon. This is a complicated issue and many potential voters still don’t know who Harry or Kathy is or why that should matter.  I test people all the time and here are the facts.

No one is listening or reading.

My current bed book-  Chronicles of the Frigate  Macedonian 1809-1922

If you vote for the woods the TIF will not work, so vote against that too, no splitting. It’s all or nothing really.

Supposedly the numbers don’t work unless the buffer zones in some areas are shrunk. It just seems such a major step back, for what again?

That interchange at Epping Rd and 101 is terrible. This strapped State won’t be making any improvements. I cannot imagine a luxury hotel on Epping Rd, or even a Mr Tux.  A friend of mine once thought Mr Tux was a front for something as you find them at every major highway interchange. Portsmouth Ave is a strong interchange , RT 125 in Epping, but Epping road? It has no traffic volume at all.  It’s a granite train.

Goodnight.

Mike