09-10-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING September 10, 2018 project. And you're saying the projects aren't going to happen if we don't give the abatements. Projects happened prior to abatements and TIF dollars. We need to be conscience about what we're doing with these abatements, and how steadily they've climbed. They can show all the graphs up here that they want, but we can show graphs of where all of the abatements have had a steady incline as well. Then you look at the AJ Wright building, we put a lot of money into that place. We gave tax abatements and they bailed. They didn't have to pay anything, and we sold the place for pennies on the dollar and never gained anything back. That's happening over and over again. If we continue to keep voting these through,then you want to sit up here and vote to reduce money for neighborhood projects,that's just wrong, that's not what we elected you folks to do. President Scott opened the floor for a rebuttal from Mr. Mueller. Mr.Mueller stated,Just to remind people that we are not talking about the loss of any tax revenues. The Hall of Fame, if this development was going to happen,we'd have something in there already. These developments are difficult, our market is still not quite there. One(1)of the folks mentioned that there may be issues with penciling out. This really shows the need for incentives in our market, where we're not going to see this level of investment. Incentives help fill that gap. We can do it with tax abatements, TIF, or a combination. We're trying to move more toward using tax abatements, because we'd like to use TIF for other things like parks, neighborhood plan implementation and public works capital. But again, Liberty Tower is a good base. We'd either be tearing it down, spending TIF dollars to demolish that building, or it would be falling apart in the middle of our downtown if it weren't for finding a developer who is willing to take the risk and put tens of millions of dollars into it, asking for tax phase in, because that's the more appropriate way to characterize this incentive. As the investment goes into it, the new tax, only on the new part, is phased in. We'll just let the results speak for themselves. I hope that we can continue this progress for the City. Councilmember Gavin Ferlic, stated, It is ok to talk about tax abatements as a whole, but I just want to remind Council and the public that we are just talking about extending the designation period. We're not talking about amending these at all, except for extending that period so it can keep up with the lag in assessments. Councilmember Gavin Ferlic made a motion to adopt Bill No. 18-42. Councilmember Jo M. Broden seconded the motion which carried by a roll call vote of seven (7) ayes (Councilmember Davis). 18-43 A RESOLUTION MODIFYING AND RECONFIRMING THE ADOPTION OF DECLARATORY RESOLUTION NO. 4467-15 DESIGNATING CERTAIN AREAS WITHIN THE CITY OF SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, COMMONLY KNOWN AS 122 CALLANDER ST. SOUTH BEND, IN 46614 AN ECONOMIC REVITALIZATION AREA FOR PURPOSES OF A (6) SIX YEAR REAL PROPERTY TAX ABATEMENT FOR JSK DEVELOPMENT, INC./IRELAND HOSPITALITY, LLC Councilmember Gavin Ferlic made a motion to adopt Bill No. 18-43. Councilmember Jake Teshka seconded the motion which carried by a roll call vote of seven(7) ayes (Councilmember Davis). 18-44 A RESOLUTION MODIFYING AND RECONFIRMING THE ADOPTION OF DECLARATORY RESOLUTION NO. 4467-15 DESIGNATING CERTAIN AREAS WITHIN THE CITY OF SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, COMMONLY KNOWN AS 121 SOUTH ST. JOSEPH ST., SOUTH BEND, IN 46601 AN 10