Finally a body of government has figured out TIF’s are a joke and just a handout to developers;
The Cass County Commission on Wednesday, July 5, rejected a developer’s request for public funding to finance the redevelopment of a property near Island Park, a financial boost that was already approved by the Fargo City Commission just last week.
The Fargo City Commission actually approved the TIF with only one dissenter, and he was doozy;
The project itself is a fine idea, Strand said, but he questioned if the city should be financially supporting it.
“I just don’t know if it’s our job as a city to partner to do that,” Strand said. “I just don’t know that’s our role, or what we should be doing… there’s lots of folks buying properties, remodeling and demolishing, but they don’t always come to us to have a 300,000 dollar investment in that.
Unlike Sioux Falls where the counties and school board just rubberstamp the city’s TIF proposals, Cass County said, NO WAY!
Strand is correct, it is NOT the responsibility of taxpayers to help fund condos. Maybe Sioux Falls needs to learn this. Just a few years ago we gave out over $50 million in TIF’s for attached parking garages to condos. While the developers are seeing millions in tax breaks and benefits there is very little ROI for taxpayers.
I actually wouldn’t be against TIFs if they helped with affordable housing and were much shorter;
“Coming at this with $300,000 (taxpayer) dollars for five units, the math for me is not even close to working,” Peterson said, adding he’d support a cheaper, five year TIF for the project.
That is what often cracks me up about TIFs, they last so long there really isn’t an ROI for taxpayers. By the time the TIF expires the property has probably changed hands a few times and the developers of the project are laughing all the way to the bank.
“Let’s hear it for Fargo!”…. “Say, you know how they discovered Fargo, don’t you?”…. “Some fur traders were on a canoe on the Red River and one of them said: ‘How far go?’, and then the other said: ‘More ahead'”….. #WhyNotFargo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM2N1w6t1KM
I think we all remember this one involving Fargo and FedEx:
FF: 08:52
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bl19RoR7lc&t=3s
If you’re offered it, take it. Problem is, offering it when it’s not necessary. In Sioux Falls it’s awarded to reimburse campaign contributors or gift to an insider. No doubt the Fargo developer is an ethical religious man who couldn’t take public funds. Developers in Sioux Falls apply pressure to steal it and immediately demand another.
Fargo is a mystical place, if you like streets dictated by trains, bonanza farms, and flat terrain. They love their college football there, too, and hockey just to the north. It’s where Maris got his education and probably hit a few homers as well, and where Dylan first met Bobby Vee. Buddy died trying to get there and many are dying to leave, but Fargo is Fargo, a mystical place which Hollywood once discovered, and now they have a wood chipper on display because of it, and golly gee hot dishes haven’t been quite the same since, and where thinking of heading out on the Empire Builder, whether east or west, is only a dream at best.
In South Dakota, there is limited redress for those tax-collecting entities which do not create the TIF District (those would be the County and local school district in the case of a City of Sioux Falls TIF).
The Planning Comission for the municipality creating the TIF District is required to notify the other tax collecting entites of the proposed TIF District and meeting date at which approval will be requested.
School districts, for instance, have no vote in deciding that millions of dollars, normally to be collected as tax revenue to the school district over the life of the TIF, will rather to be used to finance the TIF.
The original nationwide purpose for TIFs was to provide affordable housing in blighted urban areas. To say TIFs have strayed from their original intent is a huge understatement. Good job South Dacola for bringing the facts out on this issue!
Sounds like invite this developer to Sioux Falls. Probably not. He wouldn’t pay kickbacks to Planning, Zoning, and Inspections.