Greg decided to vote against the project because he questions the state legality of the TIF,
Sioux Falls attorney Brendan Reilly, retained by the city as independent counsel to advise it on TIF legalities, told the Council that its members have “wide discretion” about what qualifies for a TIF. And though state law prohibits TIF funds from directly paying for the construction of housing structures, the tax incentive program can be used for infrastructure directly related to housing.
Councilor Greg Neitzert, the lone dissenting vote, said he struggled to square state law that prohibits TIFs from being used to subsidize housing with the request coming from the mayor’s office.
I think the bigger question is NOT legality, I think it is legal, but TIF definitions are so wide that this would have given the council the authority to deny it. I just don’t see this benefitting lower income people in housing. Will it help people? Sure. But it does nothing to build density and bring the core back up to snuff and address our housing crisis. We can do this thru community development loans and federal grants and don’t have to issue ONE SINGLE TIF.
While I support Greg’s NO vote, his reasoning misses the mark.
Legality is one aspect. Construction with high materials cost, 7 percent interest, and a concentration camp design will make these homes expensive and market wise undesirable. They’ll become occupied if there’s no down payment and closing costs. The wrong element will move in and not make payments for a year until they go into foreclosure. It will become the worst sad example of why the city sucks at real estate or (for that matter any private project.
“I bet Greg learned this reasoning from an ALEC meeting, huh?”….
it was never intended to help lower income, it was intended to make housing more Accessible tomorrow. Yes, we could say by cutting the profits helps lower income people, but end of day, I really do not see how anyone making $29,000 or less ever buying a home on that income…
Greg is what you would call a strict constructionist. I bet he sends amicus briefs to Alito all the time. #ShowingOthersYourBriefs
I get it. He’s a stickler on laws, but not ethics.
Last winter/spring during the mayoral race, our current mayor organized an Accessible Housing Advisory Board, which its bureaucratic members admitted in public would hope to put a dent into the problem. Well, I guess 65 homes is a dent, isn’t it?
Our mayor also said during the last mayoral campaign, that our housing problem was a national problem, but now we have a local solution, which should have been addressed over 20 years ago, but instead we got Taupeville, fat homes, and three stall garages during that time frame.
And, David Z. was right when he called for a quota system with our housing construction in this city, during the last mayoral race, which would require every developer in town, that builds homes, to build “X” number of affordable (accessible) homes for every executive home built in this fine city, Taupeville or wherever.
( and Woodstock adds: “Did you know that Hoover was an engineer who built Hooverville?”…. “That he did”…. “And it was quite accessible”…. )