City Taxpayers on the Hook for Another Special interest 'TIF'
by Allen Williams
The latest edict coming out of Overland Park's Chancellery is a new redevelopment TIF! Surprise...surprise! The notification appears in the city's Overview Magazine - Spring 2016 publication, an introductory foray into modern fascism and what is expected of the citizen subject. The city invective is entitled 'OP Approves TIF policy; schools, others to receive 100 percent of existing revenue.'
As I've warned before, the primary duty of all Mayor and City councils is to find new ways to spend taxpayer money whether it's for a 2-mile light rail transit system in Kansas City that doesn't go anywhere or to finance teacher union controlled public schools. Yes, it's springtime in Kansas and the Reich is itching to spend your money. But what's a TIF, how does it work and why should you care?
Tax increment financing (TIF) is a public financing method that is used as a subsidy for redevelopment, infrastructure, and other community-improvement projects in many countries, including the United States. Similar or related value capture strategies are used around the world. Through the use of TIF, municipalities typically divert future property tax revenue increases from a defined area or district toward an economic development project or public improvement project in the community."
Note that diverting property tax revenue to public education neither benefits economic development nor decreases blight. The Overview breakdown reports that OP schools already receive from $1508 to $1969 dollars of public money each year per home depending on the school district one resides in.
So that's $1969 / $3418 x 100 = 57% of property tax revenues. This is far short of 100%. Shouldn't public schools and local businesses get it all? I mean schools barely consume a paltry 51% of the entire state of Kansas Budget. In contrast, protecting the life and property of city residents amounts to only ($65 + $44) / $3418 x 100 = 3.18% of property revenues
Perhaps, TIF money is needed to pay for language interpreters as in 'Kansas School District Struggles to Educate - in 81 Languages. There's also the threat of terrorism as Mike Pompeo has warned: "There are dozens and dozens of investigations of radical Islamic terrorists in Kansas today,” - Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) said Wednesday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. " We'll likely soon reap the benefits of proper English education as terrorist immigrants will be better equipped to read and know precisely where to go to blow themselves up to do the most damage.
So how does a TIF work?
As an example: "At the beginning of the TIF, the aggregate property value of all land in the TIF is $1,000,000, and annual property tax revenue is $40,000. This $40,000 is split between a handful of taxing bodies. After the TIF is created, the taxing bodies know that they will continue to receive $40,000 per year for the life of the TIF. Perhaps after a couple years, property values within the TIF increase to $1,100,000, which leads to annual tax revenues of $44,000. This extra $4,000, instead of being distributed to the taxing bodies, is deposited in the TIF fund for the city to use to reinvest in the TIF area."
What need for reinvestment? If businesses are failing in this area how will bringing in new business help? The answer is businesses that increase the property tax base overall will be sought and approved. What the city is really talking about here is a taxpayer bailout plan for falling city revenues. (The city is full of vacant business buildings.) Keeping property values high generates more revenue for the city to fund United Nations global redevelopment programs that are far more important than returning tax surpluses to the people paying the bills. Plus there's no cap on TIF abuse as the earlier Kansas City Union Station renovation revealed. Recipients were still collecting the dough long after the project was completed. And like the Johnson County Wastewater group, they feel entitled to collect a return on the people's investment.
What TIFs and Urban Redevelopment really are
The 19992 UN Agenda 21 program now upgrading to a UN Agenda 2030 social and economic program intended for "recolonizing the public into dense cities for the purpose of controlling your resource consumption, overall movement, length of life and managed death....This new universal Agenda is far, far more dangerous than Agenda 21 ever was, and it is a giant step forward into a one world system governed by bureaucratic control freaks."
Although the city supposedly relinquished its membership in the International Council on Local Environmental Issues (I.C.L.E.I.), the latest TIF is evidence that it has not abandoned participation in the UN's redevelopment agenda. As has noted.."far from being a moral force for good, taxes are – almost invariably – a force for greed, corruption, profligacy and waste.