Numbers 11 and 12 on last night’s Cascade City Council agenda were to pay Callahan Construction $19,345.60 and McDermott Industrial LLC $7,049.60 in Tax Increment Financing money.
When I got up and objected to paying very profitable businesses our taxes, the new City Administrator Lisa Kotter launched into a long-winded, inept analogy of pies in a freezer that she thought proved we all have more “pie” from TIF. It that respect, it is a bit of a Ponzi scheme, too—I hadn’t realized!
TIF is simply identifying an area of the community—usually with businesses in it—and pulling a portion of the taxes away from the normal recipients of those tax $. On the bottom of your tax bill is the list: WD School District 41%, City of Cascade 32%, Dubuque County 21%, NICC, 3% and four others receiving less than a 1%.
So the schools are the biggest loser here. Of course, the percentage of school funding has gone down every year. In spite of the reality that Iowa schools must provide services for an increasing number of foreign language and service-needy students, i.e. those with autism.
TIF is simply taxes denied to the regular recipient and turned over to businesses with certain provisos—that they hire a given number of people at a given rate—things they would do anyway if they are running an honest business—a living wage, etc!
Presumably, everybody in the community loves giving the most well-off people in the community and a couple outside it, $26,494. No wonder we can’t afford a library.
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