Voice For Liberty

Tag: Downtown Wichita arena

  • Wichita TIF public hearing was bait and switch

    This appeared in today’s Wichita Eagle.

    On Tuesday December 2, 2008, the Wichita City Council held a public hearing on the expansion of the Center City South Redevelopment District, commonly known as the downtown Wichita arena TIF district. As someone with an interest in this matter, I watched the city’s website for the appearance of the agenda report for this meeting. This document, also known as the “green sheets” and often several hundred pages in length, contains background information on items appearing on the meeting’s agenda.

    At around 11:30 am Monday, the day before the meeting, I saw that the agenda report was available. I download it and printed the few pages of interest to me.

    At the meeting Tuesday morning, I was surprised to hear council member Jim Skelton expressed his dismay that a change to the TIF plan wasn’t included in the material he printed and took home to read. This change, an addition of up to $10,000,000 in spending on parking, is material to the project. It’s also controversial, and if the public had known of this plan, I’m sure that many speakers would have attended the public hearing.

    But the public didn’t have much notice of this controversial change to the plan. Inspection of the agenda report document — the version that contains the parking proposal — reveals that it was created at 4:30 pm on Monday. I don’t know how much longer after that it took to be placed on the city’s website. But we can conclude that citizens — and at least one city council member — didn’t have much time to discuss and debate the desirability of this parking plan.

    The news media didn’t have time, either. Reporting in the Wichita Eagle on Monday and Tuesday didn’t mention the addition of the money for parking.

    This last-minute change to the TIF plan tells us a few things. First, it reveals that the downtown arena TIF plan is a work in progress, with major components added on-the-fly just a few days before the meeting. That alone gives us reason to doubt its wisdom. Citizens should demand that the plan be withdrawn until we have sufficient time to discuss and deliberate matters as important as this. What happened on Tuesday doesn’t qualify as a meaningful public hearing on the actual plan. A better description is political bait and switch.

    Second, when the business of democracy is conducted like this, citizens lose respect for both the government officials involved and the system itself. Instead of openness and transparency in government, we have citizens and, apparently, even elected officials shut out of the process.

    Third, important questions arise: Why was the addition of the parking plan not made public until the eleventh hour? Was this done intentionally, so that opponents would not have time to prepare, or to even make arrangements to attend the meeting? Or was it simple incompetence and lack of care?

    The officials involved — council members Jeff Longwell and Lavonta Williams, who negotiated the addition of the parking with county commissioners; Allen Bell, who is Wichita’s director of urban development; and Mayor Carl Brewer — need to answer to the citizens of Wichita as to why this important business was conducted in this haphazard manner that disrespects citizen involvement.

    Additional coverage:
    Wichita TIF Districts Mean Central Government Planning
    Downtown Wichita Arena TIF District Testimony
    Jim Skelton is Frustrated
    Downtown Wichita Arena TIF District Still a Bad Idea
    Wichita Mayor and City Council Prefer to Work Out of Media Spotlight
    Wichita’s Naysayers Are Saying Yes to Liberty
    Tiff over Wichita TIFs
    Downtown Wichita Arena TIF District
    Do Wichita TIF Districts Create Value?
    Wichita City Council’s Misunderstanding of Tax Increment Financing
    Tax Increment Financing in Wichita Benefits Few
    Tax Increment Financing in Iowa

  • Downtown Wichita Arena TIF District Testimony

    At the December 2, 2008 meeting of the Wichita City Council, John Todd and I testified against the expansion of the Center City South Redevelopment tax increment financing (TIF) District, commonly known as the downtown Wichita arena TIF district.

    You can read John’s remarks here, or watch a video from YouTube here. Bob’s remarks are here, or click here for the YouTube video.

  • Sedgwick County Commission Urged to Veto Wichita Arena TIF District

    From Darrell Leffew.

    The Wichita City Council voted December 2nd. to approve the TIF District for the Arena area, including a large sum for parking. As a voter and taxpayer in the County and Wichita, I respectfully request each of you on the Board of County Commission to veto that TIF.

    The Arena sales tax collections to build the project included parking expenditures. To use a TIF for more funding is double taxation. I say that for this reason: as the property taxes increase in the TIF district to pay back the City, business owners paying those increases always pass the cost on to their customers. While not directly a “tax”, it has the same effect. And this continued effort to support a downtown while ignoring the business owners elsewhere creates distrust, anger and unhappy voters.

    We, the consumer, will continue paying. Sure we have a choice as to whether we spend money at those businesses. But should we choose to NOT trade there, we actually are doing the opposite of what the TIFs were intended for.

    I am opposed to this TIF. And as member of District Advisory Board V, I have received more than three dozen calls from citizens since noon Tuesday who want a veto from our County Commission.

    I know the parking associated with the Arena is a tough issue. I read the most recent study. And I have been an opponent of the Arena. But it is being built. I therefore hope is is the most successful arena ever built. Taxing an overtaxed community during a recession is bad timing, bad government and bad politics. Hold a public hearing on the matter. Ask, no demand, the voters get involved in your process. Isn’t that how our Representative form of government is supposed to work?

    Again, I and many others who have voiced concern to me, urge you to veto that TIF.

  • Jim Skelton is Frustrated

    At yesterday’s meeting of the Wichita City Council, council member Jim Skelton expressed his frustration with last-minute additions to the plan for the Center City South Redevelopment tax increment financing (TIF) District, commonly known as the downtown Wichita arena TIF district.

    The problem is two-fold: First, when plans change at the last minute, there is no time for any debate or discussion about the changes. Citizens, and even newspaper reporters, don’t have time to prepare. Second, when a major project — one costing many millions and requiring multi-year commitments by local governments — is apparently planned on the fly, it doesn’t inspire much confidence in the people in charge.

  • Wichita Center City South Redevelopment TIF District Testimony

    From John Todd.

    Update: Watch John’s testimony on YouTube here.

    Testimony delivered by John Todd before the Wichita City Council on December 2, 2008 in opposition to the proposed Tax Increment Financing (TIF) plan for the Center city South Redevelopment District located generally around the new Intrust Bank Arena.

    In 2004, proponents of the new Intrust Arena were assuring voters that their approval of the new arena would provide the “economic boost” and the “synergy” needed for effective downtown redevelopment without the need for increased property taxes. No mention was made at that time of the need for additional taxpayer subsidies for downtown development.

    In recent testimony before the City Council, I heard a staff member advise the Mayor and this City Council that county property appraisals in the area adjacent to the new Intrust Area had increased more than 10% in the prior year. Does this proposed TIF District sound like a blighted and declining area headed for economic stagnation? Or is it time for private developers to seize this development opportunity our Mayor envisions, and of course without the need for risking the taxpayer’s wallet that is a common element in private/public partnerships?

    Since the parcels of land around the new Intrust Arena appear to be owned by dozens of small private property and business owners, private developers will need to assemble the parcel(s) they need for development through voluntary exchange rather than through government’s involuntary and coercive taking of property by either the threat of eminent domain or the actual use of eminent domain. Street improvements, if needed for the project(s), should be paid for by the private developers or through the use of special assessment financing. Can anyone believe that city and/or county planners failed to plan for the street improvements needed for the new arena and a method of paying for them prior to beginning construction of the arena? (Note: In addition to the nearly $12 million TIF proposal for streets, a last minute change added an additional $10 million the TIF for a parking garage.) Also, I believe the original Arena project the voters approved in 2004 included $14 million dollars for a parking garage.

    One doesn’t have to look very far around our city to see and appreciate the success of our many risk-taking private developers who through their knowledge of the market and their problem solving abilities, plus most importantly the investment of their own money, continue to expand our tax base, create jobs, and enhance our quality of life. Perhaps these are the people you need to call on to bid on downtown development work without the need for a massive public subsidy?

  • Late Changes Don’t Inspire Confidence in Wichita Government

    At today’s Wichita City Council meeting, Councilmember Jim Skelton revealed that the plan for the downtown Wichita arena TIF district had changed. A provision for up to $10 million in parking was added.

    I had looked at the agenda report less than 24 hours before the start of the meeting. The plan for parking spending was not mentioned. I looked right now, and yes, it’s there.

    There’s a problem when things change so quickly. Citizens can’t prepare themselves on such short notice. That’s a problem for openness and transparency in government.

    This problem is in addition to the apparent uncertainty as to what’s needed for this TIF district to succeed.

    The TIF district passed, with all city council members voting in favor.

  • Downtown Wichita Arena TIF District Still a Bad Idea

    Say no to expansion of the Center City South Redevelopment tax increment financing (TIF) District.

    Remarks to be delivered at the December 2, 2008 meeting of the Wichita City Council. Watch the video here.

    Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council:

    It is the case the the City of Wichita is proposing to limit this TIF district spending to things like streets, intersections, landscaping, and lighting. But these are still things that developers working outside of TIF districts generally have to pay for themselves.

    This is the real function of TIF districts: TIF developers get to use their own property taxes to pay for things that non-TIF developers have to pay for out-of-pocket, or through special tax assessments on top of their regular property taxes. This is accomplished through a confusing arrangement that hides the reality and size of the subsidy given to TIF developers. I’ve come to realize that this confusion serves a useful purpose to this council, because if the people of Wichita knew what was really happening, they’d be outraged.

    The proposed TIF district, while smaller than previously proposed, is still large. Very large. Has anyone calculated what share of the retail and restaurant trade in Wichita would have to be captured by this district in order for it to be successful?

    Has anyone performed a market study to see if obtaining this market share would be feasible? And if feasible, what effect would this have on existing business and development in Wichita? Specifically, what effect would this have on other development in downtown, such as Old Town and Waterwalk? We’ve seen that when city-subsidized business is in financial trouble, this council is willing to fund a bailout.

    We’re at a point, Mr. Mayor, where entrepreneurs may not be willing to work in Wichita without a taxpayer subsidy, or at least not in competition with subsidized development. I am aware of a commercial development in Wichita that has been canceled because of Wichita’s tax environment. Some developers have told me that they are reconsidering whether to do any more business in Wichita simply because of our property tax environment. This situation has recently worsened, as we voted ourselves a large tax increase last month. At the state level, spending cuts or tax increases loom as the state’s budget situation deteriorates.

    Then, consider reporting in the Wichita Eagle this summer, which found this: “City and county tax records show that nearly $159 million in public money has been spent on Wichita’s tax increment financing districts, to get roughly $150 million worth of new development.” That’s not a good deal for city taxpayers.

    Also, evidence of the effectiveness of TIF districts for cities as a whole is not good. A study from the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois finds that “cities, towns, and villages that had TIF districts actually grew more slowly than municipalities that did not use TIF.”

    Finally, Mr. Mayor, you’ve referred to some people as the “naysayers.” I don’t know if you were talking about me. It would be presumptuous of me to think so. But I don’t say “nay” to development, even to downtown development. What I say “no” to is taxpayer-subsidized development, planned and managed by government.

    Saying “no” to that, in turn, lets us say “yes” to the rich diversity of human individuality instead of a collectivist vision driven by government bureaucracy. It means saying “yes” to free people cooperating voluntarily through free markets. That is what is disappearing as more and more of our city’s development is subsidized and managed by government.

  • Wichita Mayor and City Council Prefer to Work Out of Media Spotlight

    In a statement read at the August 26, 2008 meeting of the Wichita City Council (see City Council Acts on Arena Area Redevelopment), Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer expressed his concern that “The naysayers have gotten too much media attention while those who are engaged and do the hard work are too often ignored and criticized.”

    I think the mayor’s assessment is a little overblown. Can a tiny group of citizen volunteers — a ragtag group, some might say — manage to outmaneuver the vast resources of the City of Wichita and its allied quasi-governmental organizations such as Visioneering Wichita, Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce, Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, and the Greater Wichita Convention and Visitors Bureau?

    It doesn’t seem likely.

    The mayor has the editorial board of the Wichita Eagle, the state’s largest newspaper, squarely behind almost all of his initiatives. Except for the fiasco surrounding the hiring of would-be city manager Pat Salerno, I can’t recall criticism of the mayor on the Eagle’s editorial page, except from citizens who write letters.

    I can’t imagine any news reporter in town who, upon receiving an invitation from the mayor to come to his office, would not hurry over to City Hall and report on whatever the mayor said. At length.

    The city has a Community Relations Team, consisting of three people (and perhaps other staff) with experience in media. The city’s website fares well in Internet searches, with its pages placing high in the search results pages of Google and other search sites.

    We must also remember that the people doing the “hard work” the mayor mentioned are often city staff working at a job just like anyone else. Or, they might work for quasi-governmental groups like those mentioned above.

    Importantly, remember that many of these people working for passage of the mayor’s economic initiatives stand to profit handsomely from them. These people — Wichita’s class of political entrepreneurs — prefer to earn their profits mining the halls of government power and the pockets of taxpayers rather than by pleasing customers in free markets. It’s a lot easier to please the mayor and a majority of the city council rather than working hard in the marketplace. These people get their share of media attention. They richly deserve criticism.

    I believe that the mayor and the city council thought that passage of the expansion of the TIF district surrounding the downtown arena would be business as usual. But thanks to council member Paul Gray and a few snippets of coverage here and there in the newspaper, things didn’t proceed as usual.

  • Wichita School District Dodges TIF District Issue

    At the August 25, 2008 meeting of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, John Todd and I addressed the board members, asking that they exercise their veto power over the formation of a tax increment financing (TIF) district recently created by the City of Wichita. My remarks may be read in the post Wichita School District: Don’t Give Up Your Tax and Revenue Base.

    At issue is the Wichita school district giving up its claim to tax revenue from possible future development surrounding the downtown Wichita arena. As is usually the case with TIF districts, confusion reigns. That works to the benefit of politicians, bureaucrats, and political entrepreneurs (those are the taxpayer-subsidized downtown developers), but against the interests of citizens.

    At its core, the arithmetic of property taxation is simple. There’s the assessed value of all the property within the boundaries of USD 259. Then there’s a mill levy, or tax rate. Multiply the two, and that’s how much tax revenue the district is entitled to receive. (Collecting that is a different matter. According to USD 259’s comprehensive annual financial report, the district does quite well, usually collecting over 97% of the tax it imposes.)

    But there are some restrictions imposed by the state of Kansas, and evidently these restrictions are difficult to understand. I say this because Linda Jones, chief financial officer for USD 259, postponed a presentation until she could “receive clarifications from the state,” as reported in the Wichita Eagle story School district to leave TIF debate up to city, county.

    This postponement uncovers a problem. If the Kansas school finance system is so complex that the chief financial officer of the state’s largest school district — someone paid $116,055 per year with a staff to assist — doesn’t have command of the mechanism, the system is not serving us well. It means that ordinary citizens can’t understand how things work without devoting extensive study to the issue. It also means that legislators and journalists probably don’t understand the full workings of the system. School finance, then, is understood by only a handful of politicians and bureaucrats in Topeka. And, you can be sure, by a handful of taxpayer-funded lobbyists for school districts that work the system to their advantage.

    The Wichita school board had another reason for postponing action. By its next meeting, the window of time for the board to take action vetoing the formation of the TIF district will have closed. Board president Lynn Rogers told John Todd that there will be a presentation about TIFs at the board’s next meeting. But by then, it will — conveniently — be too late for the board to take action on the downtown arena TIF district. Does Rogers understand this, I wonder?

    There is another TIF district that the city of Wichita approved that can be considered for veto at the school board’s next meeting. I’m going to ask that this matter be placed on the board’s agenda for discussion and a vote. I have no idea if I will be successful. But this will be a good test as to whether the Wichita school district is willing to address issues squarely and transparently, or dodge them as it did last night.