Strowe Has Spoken Here
It’s not online, but anti-Broadway-Village petitioner Laura Strowe has a letter in yesterday’s news that attempts to introduce some novel terminology into the debate:
[Developer Peter] Allen doesn’t like calling it a “gift” because it gets “repaid,” albeit in the form of property taxes. So let’s call it a “wombat.”
Then the question boils down to: Is it worth it to the city to make a wombat of this size? Is this development worth the cost of the wombat? Are about 30 units of affordable housing worth $80 million? Is a parking struture that only serves the development worth $80 million? Is a cleanup of contamination that costs $4 million worth $80 million? … I say no, and I say not even all of them together is worth this wombat.
Reminds us of that famous story about Abraham Lincoln. “If we call the tail a wombat, how many wombats does a dog have? Four. Calling the tail a wombat doesn’t mean it is one.”
[T]he vast majority of the many people who have signed this petition agree with me.
The vast majority of the people who agree with her agree with her. Anyone remember that Onion story, “Dukakis Gets 80 Percent of Dukakis Family Vote”?
Although your punnery is superb as usual (”Strowe has spoken…”), I wonder if you are being a little hard on La Strowe. I’m not sure how much there is to combat about her wombat terminology; or is what you’re saying that she’s making a worthy Lincolnesque comparison after all?
posted by David Boyle on July 26th, 2006 at 11:51 am eAlso, one can sign the petition (for referendum) without necessarily agreeing with her that the planned development is a bad thing. So before you strew too many onions on Strowe…
I just thought the wombat thing was pretty funny. As for people agreeing with her, she means that they agree with her about the risk for the city not being worth it, which they would pretty much have to agree in order to sign her petition.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on July 26th, 2006 at 11:56 am eI say build the googleplex on that Broadway site, then I could walk to work.
posted by JJ DL on July 26th, 2006 at 12:59 pm eI find Ms. Strowe’s argument (at least that in the quoate above) misleading in a number of ways.
First, her claim that, “the question boils down to: Is it worth it to the city to make a wombat of this size?†is incorrect. A petition to put this issue to a vote does not address whether the current mechanism is appropriate, but who should make that decision. Council has suggested, by requesting the bond be issued without a vote, that this is best decided by themselves and staff who are well educated on the issues involved and most capable of assessing the city’s financial risk. The petitioners implicitly argue that risks of this complex financial mechanism (aka the wombat) are best determined by a popular vote. No one on any side of this issue is arguing that the project is not “worth†implementing the TIF-funded bond but should be funded anyway. The question of referendum is more accurately boiled down to: Who should decide whether the project is worth the wombat?
Second, the problem with the terms “giftâ€, “wombat†and “loan†are that they all imply that the city has $80 million to give as said gift, wombat or loan. The argument implies that if we don’t give the money away as a gift, wombat or loan we will get to keep it. But the money doesn’t materialize until after it is given. Then the property owner gives the money that the city first gave but never had back to the city, who would have been owed that money whether they gave it or not, but would never have received it unless they gave it first. Reminiscent of “I’m my own Grandpaâ€, isn’t it?
TIF is a strange animal that does not equate to a loan or a gift. Nor does it equate to GIVING any wombat, woodle, whatsit, or widdley-woo. The fact that TIF funding is so difficult to understand is likely the main reason that council chose not to put it to a popular vote. I would agree that this is a strong argument for sticking with representative democracy.
This leads to my broader complaint with the implications of this petition drive. CARD is turning the petition into an attack not on this project or the decision makers (though both were included in earlier iterations of their case). Instead they are attacking a legitimate funding mechanism. They are sticking the idea that TIF = GIFT into voters’ heads. The impactwill not be limited to the current project. CARD should be focusing on the differences between this project’s funding and other TIF-funded projects like the myriad of downtown improvements that are funded through the DDA TIF, instead of beating the war drum against the shadowy evil that pays for downtown streetscapes.
posted by Scott TenBrink on July 27th, 2006 at 12:13 am eThe usual word for putting money into something that will generate revenue, whether it’s money one already has or needs to borrow, is “investment.”
There are good investments and bad investments, generally judged based on how much revenue they’re expected to bring in over what time period compared to the amount invested, how much risk is involved, and what other benefits the investor gets from the thing they’re investing in.
Is this a good investment? That’s a matter of figuring out whether the benefits to the city of the additional property taxes, and of having the development there, minus the benefits of anything that might be built there without the investment, are worth more than the money the city would put in.
posted by scg on July 28th, 2006 at 2:27 am e