According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, some businesses in Columbia, Missouri, wanted to create a Community Improvement District (CID) and pay for improvements by a sales tax increase within the CID's borders.
The Columbia City Council established the district on a 5-2 vote in April in response to a petition from a group of property owners in the CID boundaries. The “qualified voters” in a CID are capable of levying various taxes or assessments within the boundaries of the district to fund improvement projects. Under state law, decisions to impose sales taxes in a CID are to be made by registered voters living in the district boundaries. If no such registered voters are present, property owners vote.
The property owners drew the district to exclude registered voters so they could impose a sales tax and avoid additional property taxes. In their efforts, they overlooked a single graduate student who lives in the district, Jen Henderson. Now, she alone gets to decide the fate of the sales tax increase.
The CID Executive Director Carrie Gartner, who says the district is not viable without the sales tax increase, has approached Henderson.
[More after the break.]
Henderson said she doesn’t want her involvement with the CID to be private. She said Gartner initially approached her in June to explain the goals of the CID and ask her to consider “unregistering her vote” so the property owners could make the decision. The more she researched the situation, Henderson said, things “just didn’t seem to be as good as they were saying to me at first.”
Gartner “tried to get me to unregister, and that’s pretty manipulative,” Henderson said. “The district plan and the district border is manipulative, too.”
Henderson says she doesn't know how she will vote, but she has concerns about
...vague project outlines, Gartner’s pay [$70,000/year], Business Loop improvements she said will help businesses but not nearby residents and how an additional sales tax would affect low-income people purchasing groceries and other necessities
Gartner says the CID is already in debt for about $215,000. If the vote isn't held, or goes against the CID, the property owners will have to rely on the property taxes they had hoped to avoid.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BK on Saturday August 29 2015, @05:51PM
It seems to me that one way or another the cost of these improvements is going to be born by low income and other shoppers and users of the businesses in the district. If the property taxes go up so will the prices. If they have a special sales tax, it amounts to the same thing. I suppose that the advantage to the businesses is that they get to blame the government for any increases with a sales tax.
Corrupt and stupid.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:49PM
The newspaper article doesn't seem to have done any investigation, it even started off with a very one-sided statement about the tax being needed for the district "to thrive." So I doubt we are getting the whole story.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:51PM
I think that that is a simplistic view. Many businesses in the district may not serve the local population. They are probably constrained on any price rises that they can impose on their non-local customers by competition.
This whole situation appears to be a bunch of businesses getting together to increase the value of their property while having the locals who don't own the businesses pay for the cost of the improvements when they shop there.
In other words, the locals pay the cost, while the benefits accrue to the business owners.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @08:14PM
It seems to me that one way or another the cost of these improvements is going to be born by low income and other shoppers and users of the businesses in the district.
Either directly or thru the magic of accounting. At least this way is 'up front'? You think businesses dont pass on costs of doing business? Where did you learn economics? Because in the classes I took they showed how customers foot the bill. It is part of the MR=MC formula. MC has a portion of tax being called a marginal cost. Cost includes things such as taxes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday August 30 2015, @01:57AM
That is generally so, but competition from businesses not in that district may constrain them to accepting lower profit instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @12:55AM
...but definitely NOT stupid.
(Score: 2) by BK on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:19AM
Stupid for not being sure that nobody lived there.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @06:32AM
If you want to move the goal-posts like then you are invalidating your original post.
Which kind of eliminates anything meaningful you might have contributed to the discussion.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday August 29 2015, @05:54PM
[More after the break.]
What?
There's no break, except the one that now exists solely to tell readers that there is more after it. Which is redundant, because I can see the words right there with my eyes.
So why write that?
[This line intentionally devoid of all meaning and purpose]
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2, Interesting) by redneckmother on Saturday August 29 2015, @05:58PM
Reminds me of the IBM manuals - "This page left intentionally blank" - which, of course, made the page "non blank".
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:04PM
Right. You wanted them to leave it blank, so you could wonder if it's a misprint.
(Score: 2, Informative) by redneckmother on Saturday August 29 2015, @07:50PM
No, it just made for some hilarity for the users. We understood the reasoning behind the sentence, but disagreed on the contents of the text.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:32PM
On the main page, the txt stops at the "more after the break". Yes, ideally that would be removed from the click-through story.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:02AM
There certainly was a break when I looked at it. [more after the break] appeared at the very bottom of the summary on the front page. Sure enough, when I viewed the story, there was (drumroll please) MORE!
Perhaps your browser may vary.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:50AM
Ah! I come in via RSS and never go to the front page.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fnord666 on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:01PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:10PM
The part you missed is that she is the only resident. There are no other residents, so she is the "representative" for herself. There is no karma payback going on here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by eof on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:16PM
She represents all the people who will have to pay the sales tax in the district. There would be no point to the businesses if there weren't any patrons.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday August 29 2015, @07:13PM
And she nneed to vote it down, regardless of the economics involved just tt bitch slap the underhanded way they tried to manipulate the political pricess.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @09:54PM
Down? Why not fully embrace the idea of higher sales taxes to pay for local improvements that benefit all the local residents? ;)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:07AM
Perhaps it doesn't benefit the surrounding residents. Certainly them going to the trouble of trying (and failing) to exclude any residents from the vote suggests that the property owners themselves don't believe there is a visible benefit to the residents.
General rule of thumb, when a group of people try to get a particular vote through political and/or procedural trickery, there's probably a good reason to vote the other way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @07:51PM
Most land in the city is used by industry. Of the fewer than 100 residents, many are employed by the city.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/27/opinion/la-oe-cole-vernon-20101227 [latimes.com]
The Columbia CID could offer Henderson a well-paid "job" in the event that the sales tax is approved.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Saturday August 29 2015, @09:17PM
When asked if the CID would be financially viable without the sales tax increase, Gartner said “no.” ... Gartner said the CID has incurred “significant debt” the district hoped to pay down through the tax, including more than $100,000 it owes the city and for legal representation, $55,000 owed to Jack Miller of True Media and a $60,000 line of credit with Landmark Bank.
So, in a nutshell, people behind some apparently non-viable businesses mismanaged an otherwise non-viable community business association, ran up debts, and want them to be paid off via increased taxes which will be passed on to customers.
More and more I think that any business that has to demand tax cuts, special deals, or government concessions to survive (including poverty level wages) should just be allowed to go bankrupt.
You want Free Enterprise and Market Forces? I'll give you Free Enterprise and Market Forces, and if your business can't survive, tough luck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @12:12PM
and the earners of "poverty level wages" that you've put out of works ... what becomes of them?
You social democrats have lost the political power to sterilize people you'd like to sweep under the rug. So what now?
The poor out-breed you, and even your police state murdering and imprisoning them isn't enough to stop them.
But you offer them some rhetoric and handouts so they vote with you to destroy their jobs.
I take it you imagine a world where the government then steps in to fix this "failure of capitalism" (i.e. unemployment - deliberately created by the left), the private sector is squeezed to death by regulations and the public sector keeps growing to fix these engineered 'failures of capitalism'. And eventually all that is left is the public sector (I bet you're getting giddy now)... but that's not the way this ends.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @09:43PM
They figured they could steamroll a sales tax increase through that would pay for their organizing and legal expenses, and then some.
Suck it up, guys.
(Score: 1) by Pino P on Sunday August 30 2015, @12:56AM
This isn't going to play out like the 2008 movie Swing Vote [wikipedia.org], is it?
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Sunday August 30 2015, @06:55AM
Gartner says the CID is already in debt for about $215,000. If the vote isn't held, or goes against the CID, the property owners will have to rely on the property taxes they had hoped to avoid.
So, instead of local shoppers getting hit by unexpectedly high prices due to the new sales tax, the property owners of the district that tried to shut out the locals from voting would have to pay it themselves? Sounds like a plan.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.