The City-County Council meets tonight. Increasing your taxes and siphoning off property taxes from known future development to pay for corporate tax handouts instead of cops, are on the agenda.
The Council will vote on raising the local car rental tax from 4 to 6% (Prop 24) and raising ticket tax from 6 to 10% (Prop 23). They will also vote on Prop 448, which puts back the nearly $32 million Mayor Vaughn slashed from County Office 2013 budgets; a move that made no fiscal sense, just created blackmail fodder. These are all to have public hearings, as they are fiscal ordinances.
Prop 291, the Mid-North TIF, will be voted on as well, but no public hearing is to be held. This plan specifically removes property taxes derived from the taxpayer-funded Broad Ripple parking garage from common good uses, like paying for public safety in places like Broad Ripple, to paying for public art near Broad Ripples innumerable bars and park upgrades to Tarkington Park. Developer driven tax handouts are anticipated within the 1 square mile of the TIF district as well. If things go well, Mapleton-Fall Creek, an actual area of need, just may get a project financed with TIF dollars.
Among the Proposals being introduced tonight is Prop 33, sponsored by Councillors Talley and Robinson, which directs DPW to use $3 million of its 2013 RebuildIndy funds for Avondale-Meadows infrastructure improvements. This proposal is being offered to substitute for the expansion of the Fall Creek Place TIF which proponents hoped to use to attract a grocery store. These proponents now suggest more investments of TIF dollars were also hoped for, once the grocery was in place and the TIF fund grew. I do not know what those projects were expected to be or if they simply expected to spend any and all TIF dollars that amassed beyond the initials needs.
Also likely making an appearance is newly selected Councillor Jefferson Shreve, whose residency qualifications for that office were called into question over the weekend. Selected Saturday morning, questions arise, trail of documents unearthed by Saturday afternoon. Somewhere in that time, they GOP hastily swore Shreve in. You can read all about it on the Advance Indiana and Ogden On Politics blogs.
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Mark Small posted a blog post
4 hours ago
5 comments:
Oh please, Steve Talley just showed us his true lying colors.His only interest in this project is so his BFF can have the grocery store contract...Hey Pat do your homework...fair is fair
I'm happy to review any documents or references you wish to share.
I'm looking for some solid numbers on what the projected benefit is for public safety (dollarwise), can you point me in the right direction?
Jon Murray, IndyStar reporter, has this article in today's paper:
http://www.indystar.com/article/20130128/NEWS05/130128041/City-County-Council-hikes-taxes-rental-cars-tickets-events-Downtown-
He reiterates that the first year, the entire $6.7 million will go to the City, and subsequent years 25% (up to a max of $2.5 million as I recall the details) after that.
When the deal between the Democrat leadership and the Mayor was announced, the Ds said the money would go to public safety. The Mayor's spokesman said that it won't necessarily go there.
Thanks for getting back to me. I was hoping to be able to hold the city to account on this, but "public safety" is awfully vague and with combined budgets in the hundreds of millions, I think this is more them being able to say they're funding "public safety" than anything else. Oh well, thanks again anyway!
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