TIF Districts

[Pete]

How does that work? Is someone fronting the money to give to the developer? If so, where is that money coming from?

Here in Jax the property tax is collected and then give back to the property owner as a rebate. In Cincy it just isn't collected at all until time is up.

Here, it is a mix.

Sometimes the city gives the money upfront and more recently (after a light started to be shined on their process) they began to shift towards providing property and sales tax abatement.

But they still give some developers money upfront before they've built anything. That's exactly what is being proposed at Strawberry Fields and the Omni demanded the city give them the full amount before they spent a dime of their own money. In that case, the city was hit with tens of millions of interest charges on top of the tens of millions given the Omni.


That thing with the Omni still burns my arse. I knew the Alliance was on a deadline to submit the full financial package to City Council and the day it was due (there is a deadline for compliance with open meetings law) I saw it hit the public agenda, quickly downloaded it, saw there was a huge finance charge involved that was not disclosed in dollar amounts, and immediately picked up the phone to call Cathy O'Connor. Within minutes I saw a full story in the Oklahoman about this very subject and with quotes from O'Connor and others. The Alliance obviously leaked it to Lackmeyer who of course just published what they fed him and never bothered to ask about the significant finance charges.

I was steaming by the time O'Connor called me back because it was an obvious manipulation of the facts. She refused to give me a number but there is absolutely no way they are proposing a massive financial deal without having all the details. So, I called the Director of Finance for OKC and he quickly gave me the run-down. In the addition to the $85 million in freebies given to the Omni, there would be a whopping $53 million (!!!) in interest costs.

Of course we were the only outlet to even bother to research this issue while the Oklahoman happily just reported $85 million.


It's things like this that causes me to keep a very sharp eye on the Alliance in general and TIF in particular because absolutely no one else is.

[Teo9969]

Here, it is a mix.

Sometimes the city gives the money upfront and more recently (after a light started to be shined on their process) they began to shift towards providing property and sales tax abatement.

But they still give some developers money upfront before they've built anything. That's exactly what is being proposed at Strawberry Fields and the Omni demanded the city give them the full amount before they spent a dime of their own money. In that case, the city was hit with tens of millions of interest charges on top of the tens of millions given the Omni.


That thing with the Omni still burns my arse. I knew the Alliance was on a deadline to submit the full financial package to City Council and the day it was due (there is a deadline for compliance with open meetings law) I saw it hit the public agenda, quickly downloaded it, saw there was a huge finance charge involved that was not disclosed in dollar amounts, and immediately picked up the phone to call Cathy O'Connor. Within minutes I saw a full story in the Oklahoman about this very subject and with quotes from O'Connor and others. The Alliance obviously leaked it to Lackmeyer who of course just published what they fed him and never bothered to ask about the significant finance charges.

I was steaming by the time O'Connor called me back because it was an obvious manipulation of the facts. She refused to give me a number but there is absolutely no way they are proposing a massive financial deal without having all the details. So, I called the Director of Finance for OKC and he quickly gave me the run-down. In the addition to the $85 million in freebies given to the Omni, there would be a whopping $53 million (!!!) in interest costs.

Of course we were the only outlet to even bother to research this issue while the Oklahoman happily just reported $85 million.


It's things like this that causes me to keep a very sharp eye on the Alliance in general and TIF in particular because absolutely no one else is.

When I looked at the TIF budgets last fall it seemed like maybe there was some borrrowing back and forth between the funds, especially the older, bigger funds.

I know we've paid a hefty interest bill particularly for earlier projects, but if I recall, we do have quite a bit of funds "on hand".