More Tax Breaks? Why? thestate/2015/01/23/3946500_exclusive-student-apartments-proposed.html?rh=1 Council is again voting Tuesday on giving a 50% tax break to another student dorm to be built near the stadium. Why? These are going to be built anyhow, much as the ones farther down Bluff were, which received no tax breaks. The market is ripe for student dorms, it appears, and the closer, the more valuable, to students and to tax rolls. Council is giving away money that can be used for helping to fix water/sewer problems, police needs, firemen a long awaited raise, and to keep the costs down on us who live here and pay the highest property tax rate in the state. These new mega-units will increase the burden on our already failing water/sewer systems (did I ever mention the major pipe break I saw last summer in an area just before those Bluff Rd units?), on our police, fire, inspections, ambulance, and everything else citizens need. I dare say students often need a bit more police attention/protection than the more settled city residents. Why should they get a break and our long time city residents not? Unlike stated in the article, this is not good business! First, it cheats those facilities that have been built and are paying their fair share. They now are made losers in this game of council’s, as their competitors get to walk away with a cool $400,000 or more every year. It also says to other business thinking of locating here that business decisions by council are not fair, so if you build now, you may find a competitor later comes in and gets a 50% reduction, tearing your profits down and possibly putting you out of business. It also says you have to have the right attorneys and grease the right hands. Old Bob Coble looks to be a good one to go to as he is the attorney that not only got the dorm on Gervais at Harden a 50% tax cut, but also got a variance to allow fewer parking spaces, 75%, than there are apartments in the building, a terrible mistake that will surely rear its ugly head once the place is built. ( I suggest you reread my 11-18-2014 newsletter on this with Ann Sinclair’s comments as well: https://groups.google/forum/#!topic/theazarnewsletter/tarfCEDu3Vs ) It is time these developers pay their fair share. Our city needs the help, our schools need the help, our city residents need the help. To tax our residents to support rich developers is simply not fair, and blatantly forcing them to support the rich borders on the immoral. If our mayor is serious about his state of the city speech, and not just profiling with hot air, he will vote against this. These dorms will be built, tax break or not. Make them pay their fair share for upkeep, as they should, rather than those who are current city residents having to support them. The middle class and poor of Columbia can no longer afford more. Ann Sinclair’s letter spells the financials out well. Read it. Joseph Azar
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 02:54:50 +0000