November 27, 2009 08:44 PM UTC

The Worst Idea I've Heard in Awhile

• 0 Comments
• by: morgancarroll

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

You can’t blame them, really. I mean the promise of having the public and the taxpayers assume all of the risk while they retain all of the private profit. What’s not to like?

Historically, developers sought financing for building projects like everyone else — by saving, putting money down and qualifying for financing through investors, banks or financial institutions. That is so passe.

Today’s developer (at least Lend Lease) not only wants, but expects — in fact demands — either special district funding (through your property taxes), TIF funding (your taxes), and / or public tax dollar incentives – $90 Million in Tax Breaks!

The Denver Post ran an excellent article today, written by Carlos Illescas, Developer Seeks $90 Million in Tax Breaks for Huge Aurora Project.  https://www.denverpost.com/news…

The scheme goes something like this:

   * they demand “incentive money” from our school district; along with

   * tax-increment financing for their project from the city;

   * “blight” the area by E-470 & I-70;

   * the school district willingly pays the money; because

   * the state has to “back-fill” it.

NEWSFLASH! The state is BROKE. We will already be making billions of cuts into essential services to the people of Colorado.  This is an irresponsible expenditure of taxpayer money and is a coercive financing model.

The development would include 3,800 homes and 1.3 million square feet of retail and in case anyone hasn’t notice Aurora’s commercial vacancy rate is approximately 13% and we have a plethora of vacant, unsold and vacant homes already in Aurora.  Adding a school and library building into the mix hardly turns this into a public project.  The benevolent distraction of a building a school dissolves when one realizes that  we will be paying it back anyway.  And a building doesn’t teach kids. A building without teachers or books is just a building.  And if the state is forced to backfill millions to private developers we will have less money for teachers, K12, higher ed, senior services, law enforcement, driver’s license offices, etc.

This concept is not just offensive but would have devastating consequences to the entire State of Colorado.  Then ask what if every developer and school district did this?  Our entire general fund would eventually do straight to private developers.

The State General Fund is only $7.68 Billion which per capita is one of the lowest in the nation.  Now imagine you are the one who will need to find $3 billion in cuts in an already brutalized funding scheme and ask yourself — of all of the different needs competing for our limited dollars, where does back-filling millions of dollars in funding for one private Australian Developer to build a residential and commercial project that we don’t need fit in?

Nowhere, I hope.