Cordish Complaining?

I was shocked that Cordish, the TIF Pig behind the KC Live district, has the gall to complain about festival licenses being issued to other districts in the city to allow outdoor drinking. They claim they were "promised" that the city wouldn't allow such competition.

Were those promises made in the same meetings when Cordish promised to have the district ready in the Fall of '07?

Just wondering . . .

Liberty Memorial Board Member Blows Smoke

I just about choked on my coffee this morning when I saw Tim Kristl, of all people, complaining about the budget cuts to Liberty Memorial and announcing that they are cutting the steam off on the Eternal Flame atop the phallus. Tim Kristl.

Tim Kristl, for those who don't know, is a symbol of city politics gone wrong. He was the punch line in the sick joke that was the Semler appointment - despite her flaws, nobody could say that she was the worst Parks Board appointee ever, because that title belongs to Mr. Kristl, and that trophy won't travel.

Mr. Kristl, a confidant of the former mayor, was one of the main paths to developer riches during the prior administration. Now that those developer incentives are draining the city treasury, the last person who ought to be complaining is Tim Kristl.

They say the birds will eventually come home to roost. Maybe they can roost on the flameless top of Liberty Memorial.

This Is What I Voted For

Despite numerous distractions along the way, I've never lost faith in the fundamental premise of why I voted for Mayor Funkhouser. It's paying off.

His handling of the budget mess has been masterful. First, he didn't play the "hide the cards" game of his predecessor. As soon as he got the structurally imbalanced budget from Wayne "I fixed the imbalance on my resume" Cauthen, he shared it with the rest of the Council, in a good faith effort to allow them to be fully informed and up to speed.

Then, he called on Cauthen to propose how to eliminate the $78 million imbalance immediately. Of course, Cauthen groused about it and proposed an unworkably harsh budget, but it got everyone's attention. Business as usual is dead, and everyone knows it.

Now, it's time for hard choices. Funk has the city talking about them - facing financial reality as the economic picture turns dark. He's come up with a way to get 20 more cops, focus on basic services, and improve our codes enforcement, but it's not easy, and it's not ribbon-cutting that is going to get us there.

Funk promised to work toward a city that works for regular folks. I look at his budget, and I think he's leading us toward that goal. Given the enormous stakes (Moody's has changed our credit outlook from stable to negative), I'm happy that we've moved past the "Don't Tax, but Spend Lavishly" atmosphere celebrated by the TIF pigs running the show for the past several years.

This is the hard work of governing, and Funkhouser has rolled up his sleeves. Thank you, Kansas City, for electing him.

Briarcliff TIF Pig Kristl Abuses His Seat on the Parks Commission

Tim Kristl is notorious for his, umm, moral flexibility in juggling many roles to benefit himself and his clients at the expense of Kansas Citians. Not surprisingly, he is one of the biggest TIF pigs behind the "Briarcliff TIF Boondoggle", the absolute nadir of Kay Barnes' free-spending cronyism.

In today's Kansas City Star, Kristl abused his seat on the Kansas City Parks Commission to lash out at Funkhouser once again. Tim, we understand that you have been feeding at the TIF trough for years, and that you fear that Funkhouser is going to bring some sanity to a system which has made you insanely wealthy. We understand how frightened you must be, knowing that the TIF audit Kay Barnes and Al Brooks are hiding is going to expose you and your cohorts when it finally comes to light. We understand that your history of seeking money from boards you are serving on has lowered your standards of personal behavior.

But get this straight, Mr. Kristl. Your duty as a member of the Parks & Recreation Board of Commissioners is "To improve the quality of life by providing recreational, leisure and aesthetic opportunities for all citizens and by conserving and enhancing the environment." Your duty does not include lying about what Funkhouser's audits have accomplished. Your duty does not include taking advantage of your position to try to attack the man who will be ending your ride on the gravy train.

One of the best things about seeing Funkhouser win this election will be watching him drive snakes like Tim Kristl from positions of influence and back under the rocks where they belong.

Is the Barnes TIF Tax-Give-Away Train About to Leave the Station?

One of the fascinating aspects of this mayoral contest is the inability of Mayor Kay Barnes to cope with the fact that she is finished. She is twisted up inside about the fact that Mark Funkhouser is likely to win, instead of her chosen Mayor pro tem, Alvin Brooks. She's ranting to anyone who will listen, and rumor has it that she is willing to say or do absolutely anything to prevent a new voice in City Hall.

Tony's Kansas City reports on what must have been one of the oddest scenes in Kansas City's strange political history. Kay Barnes held a secret gathering of "her people" to warn them that the gravy train for TIF pigs would end if Mark Funkhouser wins the election. Tony reports (apparently via the KC Prime Buzz, where the Star puts the material it doesn't believe Star subscribers deserve),

Mayor Kay Barnes endorsed Alvin Brooks for mayor at a private meeting she held last Thursday with a select group of KC business leaders.

Barnes secretively arranged the 8 a.m. breakfast at the Downtown Marriott, which Brooks attended.

In her invitation on Feb. 28 to about two dozen people, Barnes wrote:

"I wish to discuss with you my thoughts on the general election which will be held only 27 days from now. I am concerned that the progress we have achieved, in large part because of your efforts, is now in jeopardy."

Among the persons invited by Barnes: Lawyers Herb Kohn, Jack Craft, David Fenley, Jerry Riffel, Michael T. White and Mike Burke.

What kind of panicked insanity is this? Each of those lawyers is a TIF tax give-away lawyer - each of those lawyers makes hundreds of thousands of dollars by shifting tax dollars from our potholes and police into the pockets of wealthy developers.

Why are all these TIF tax give-away lawyers so excited to have Alvin Brooks step into Barnes' shoes? Because Alvin Brooks, in his 8 years as council person and Mayor pro tem, has never, ever voted against a single TIF give-away. Not a single one. Every time that some developer came to him and said "Rather than having tax money go toward helping Kansas Citians, I want you to give that money to me," Alvin was there to say "Yes". When 88% of tax dollars were going to the wealthiest districts, Alvin was there to ignore the East side in favor of the wealthy.

Did Alvin Brooks stand up for the poor when the Briarcliff zillionaires wanted tax dollars to line their pockets? Of course not. Instead, he stood up at breakfast with Kay to ask those TIF lawyers for campaign contributions.

Springsteen Next Weekend - a TIF Alternative?

In my last TIF post, I was pretty negative. In my heart of hearts, though, I'm a positive person, looking for answers to society's problems, and hoping to leave this world a little better for my time here.

So, today, I offer up my alternative to TIF. My only request is that you erect a huge statue of me after I'm gone.

First, let's focus on what we all want. We all want a thriving, interesting, active downtown. We all want good jobs downtown. We all want people to use public transportation. We all want to help the homeless (actually, that's a lie - we all say we want to help the homeless, but many just want them to disappear). We all want our basic services, such as police protection and snow removal, funded.

These are all good things.

Unfortunately, someone in Kansas City's past convinced us that the way to get these things is to give tax money to real estate developers and lawyers. I don't mean to cast blame, but I distinctly recall that the first person to describe TIF to me was Jim Glover. While Jim Glover is certainly an extremely handsome man, he is not the sort to chair the social committee. The fact that Jim was seduced by the charisma of developers and real estate lawyers is where we made our first wrong turn on our path to a lively, thriving, exciting downtown.

With a logic that baffles me, our fine city has decided that the best way to get a fun and lively downtown scene is to funnel our tax dollars to developers and their lawyers. The result is that we are going to be spending $79 million this year on TIF plans, and their most visible success is relocating a lot of IRS people from Kansas City to Kansas City.

Do you realize how much money $79 million is?!?!?! And what we could do with that money to give us a thriving, cool downtown?! And I'm not talking about some dim, distant day when the Penguins finally give up on Pittsburgh - my plan could start next weekend! I guarantee that my plan would have an impact immediately.

Here it is - there are 52 weekends in a year. Each weekend, we're going to spend a MILLION FREAKING DOLLARS on a kick-ass party downtown. I checked the Gomer's ads, and we can get 12 packs of Boulevard (gotta support the locals!) for $10.48, so, doing the math, we can get a million bottles of Boulevard to hand out FOR FREE - that's two and a little extra for every man, woman and child in Kansas City - for $833,333. The extra $166,666 we'll use to get Bruce Springsteen and a whole bunch of porta-potties.

And the thing is, we could do this EVERY WEEKEND, FOR FREE, and WE'D STILL BE SAVING $27 MILLION off what we're paying real estate developers to bring us IRS agents. IRS agents, or rock stars - what kind of choice is that?

Think of the spin-off benefits! People would not want to drive downtown and park, and, with all that beer flowing, they shouldn't drive home. Light rail would be jam packed, as would the Max and every other form of public transportation available. The businesses downtown would make a retail killing - pretzels, pizza, and tasteless t-shirts are some products with known appeal to this sort of crowd. And we could tax everything! Heck, the homeless could even recycle the bottles and make money off them, too!

Now, if we threw a million dollar party every single weekend, can you imagine how many people would come here every weekend, and how many would find a way to stay here? Omaha, St. Louis, Wichita, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver - they'd all be ghost towns on the weekends.

Remember, this is still $27 million LESS than what we're paying the developers and their lawyers. You'd have to pay for my statue out of that, but you could use the rest for other stuff.

Maybe you'd want to take the 8 solid blocks on the north side of downtown that has been flattened by - umm, yeah, civic-minded real estate developers again - and put up a whole bunch of Butler buildings (local industry again) and stock them with Nintendo Wiis and pinball games, that people could play for FREE. Maybe we could permanently shut down some of the roads that the city has closed for construction and have the coolest go-cart tracks ever through downtown. Maybe we could dig another huge hole or two, and have some awesome moto-cross space!!

The mind boggles when you have $79 million of taxpayer money to play with. Maybe, you'd just want to have the parties, and use the extra $27 million for basic services, like police and snow removal. It's your money - it ought to be your choice.

TIF and Tax Abatement

(Updated and bumped: Joe Miller of Kansas City Soil does a great job in this post of excerpting a good article by the Star on just how badly TIF is hurting this city.)

A commenter asks: What is the difference between TIFF and tax abatement. Does KC use both to spur development? Do different parts of gov. approve each?

TIF is a form of tax abatement. When used properly, it's kind of cool. Let's say you have an old, decrepit buidling you want to knock down and put an office building up in its place, that will bring 100 new jobs to the area. Unfortunately, the dollars just don't quite add up. By the time you add in the increased property taxes, parking, and some streetscape improvements, etc., you'd wind up losing money on the deal. So, no new jobs, and same decrepit building. And the increased city revenue that might have come from the increased property value and all that economic activity won't ever happen.

Well, TIF might give you an extra income stream. Under TIF, the city comes and says, okay, if you build it, we will take the money you would have to pay in increased property tax, and let you spend it on the project. And we'll let half the local sales taxes, earnings taxes, utility taxes, etc. go toward making it happen. On top of that, if it's in an area the state government really wants to develop, we'll kick in state taxes, including the income tax from the new employees.

Suddenly, there's a whole lot more money to make the project happen. And, theoretically, it's no real loss in taxes, because the project would not have happened without the help.

The problem is that developers understand that this money is available without much control. Nobody really wants to raise a fuss about it - the people involved in the process, from the EDC, to the city government, and pretty much on down the line, all have a bias in favor of getting the deal done. Indeed, the organization that handles the money on these projects is the same organization that is supposed to recommend whether to implement the plans - and is a subset of the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City. Please note that the name of the organization is not the "Responsible Watchdog for Tax Dollars Corporation". Similarly, the city council gets campaign donations from the same developers, lawyers and construction companies who have a strong bias in favor of these projects.

Economic development sounds progressive and positive. Indeed, economic development IS progressive and positive, but cutting the city and schools who need tax revenue is not. That's what TIF does - in fact, it does a little worse than that, because it increases the services the city needs to deliver, without adding to the tax base to pay for those services. The next time you want to complain about a pothole on Troost, think about the smooth, manicured roads at Briarcliff that the BMWs and Lexi are gliding over, while the tax dollars generated there go to line the pockets of the developers.

Now, beyond TIF, there are a bunch of other forms of tax abatement. Under RSMo Chapter 353, there is a state tax abatement opportunity, similar to TIF. Kansas City's Planned Industrial Expansion Authority hands out tax abatement like the Secret Santa used to hand out hundred dollar bills. To be honest, I don't even know all the different forms of tax abatement and governmental support available to those who have money and want to make much more of it.

In a nutshell, if you want to make money in commercial real estate Kansas City, you'd be a complete jackass to pay your fair share to support city services or our schools. Instead, hire a competent real estate development lawyer, and make more money. But, to answer your questions, my dear commenter, TIF is a form of tax abatement, Kansas City uses many forms of tax abatement to "spur development" (and help developers get wealthier), and the approval policies for each form of tax abatement differ enough that you should hire a real estate development lawyer to guide you through the gilded, byzantine world of taxpayer financing.