Comments on: Consulting is a sweet gig, especially for TIF projects

By: Northlander

Northlander — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:20:02 +0000

Why would the E.D.C. ever stop a project? They get a % from each project they do. Science City,18th & Vine,Uptown,plus many more. Next year look for the City to be $121 million or more in the RED.
When you have a TIF that pays for chairs,desk and cabinets for H&R Block I don’t call that a good deal.

By: Brent

Brent — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:44:34 +0000

In all fairness, the city does have auditors that work to evaluate things like this…and in the P&L’s case, the auditor, our current mayor, recommended against this particular project because the projections looked to large and there was no wiggle room. But the auditor was ignored.

Upon further review, it could have been a stubborn council that ignored his advice — or could have been that the auditor was bull-headed and had earned the treatment. Either way, that work was done — was correct — but ignored.

That still doesn’t excuse Cordish for still having 1/2 of the district sitting empty.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:01:22 +0000

isn’t it too late? while the EDC is not inherently evil, it’s certainly not best practice to have them as the only ones checking their work. ship their offices over to city hall (instead of the TIF’d out town pavilion) and see if anything changes.

P+L is far from the albatross that science city turned out to be, but desperate times call for desperate measures. let’s hope the real lesson here is to just not let things get so bad that the rescue process clouds our judgment.