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HomeMy WebLinkAboutA061 - Memo from Merlin Pfannkuch requesting no additional tax abatements Page 1 of 2 ✓'vi�D� From: merlin pfannkuch <merlinp@pcpartner.net> To: tedjoanie@aol.com <tedjoanie@aol.com>; rcrosswind@aol.com <rcrosswind@aol.com>; judiehoffman@yahoo.com <judiehoffman@yahoo.com>; sharonwirth@yahoo.com <sharonwirth@yahoo.com>; st.goodhue@isunet.net <st.goodhue@isunet.net>; bobanncamp@aol.com <bobanncamp@aol.com>; hcgbach@ames.net <hcgbach@ames.net> Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 1:53 PM Subject: Somerset I ask you not to approve any additional tax abatements for Somerset . . . beyond the limited abatement for commercial areas adopted three years ago. Furthermore, I believe your"hearing-on-a-hearing" procedure is probably not legal. Substantively, the various proposals to expand tax abatements are simply unfair . . . once you get rid of all the blather. Something about"equal protection under the law." Mistakes were made in this project. So now the rest of us taxpayers are suppose to bail out the developers? Did they have a rough decade? This proposal is bald-faced trickle-downism! How can the City yammer out of one side of its collective mouth about the dangers of the Iowa legislature adopting property tax caps and out of the other side give tax breaks? If mistakes were made, then I agree with what Joe Lynch said at the Feb. 27 meeting. The City should pay for the study, then possibly tell the developers to hop to it. Why should we commit to both a study to help correct past mistakes and tax abatements before the study is even done. The motion adopted Feb. 27 took all teeth out of staffs proposal. This project can make it on its own merits, if the developers would just quit bitching about it. Despite the past mistakes, this development is now finally starting to take shape. I have visited the development several times in the past month, and firmly believe this. It's considerably more attractive to me than any other recent housing development in Ames with which I am familiar. Sure, development has slowed . . . while everyone waits for a tax break before beginning construction. Who wouldn't wait? I know of one party who is apparently planning to move to Somerset who was bitching about your slow action re abatement. Procedurally, this proposal doesn't past the smell test. Urban revitalization procedures are roughly comparable to zoning procedures.0A- s such, they require about the highest level of procedural correctness of any Council actions. Section 404.9(6) of the Iowa code clearly talks about amending a plan once it's passed (at least in this context). How does this "hearing-on-a-hearing" procedure qualify? To my knowledge, you have yet to either ask your counsel for a written opinion, or ask for an Attorney General's opinion relative to this. The City seems to have forgotten that the purpose of the notice and hearing requirements are to give interested parties a chance to come and have their say about the topic of the notice. Well, I stopped by the City Clerk's office about 9 a.m. today and asked to see the council packet for tonight . . . procedure (hopefully) for somgone wanting to comment on the agenda items. For agenda items 28 and 29, 1 found one sheet, summaYFzing what action Council took Feb. 27. This is adequate notice? I told you as early as December that the City had screwed up this proposal from the start, and should start over. You declined to follow that advice, instead apparently preferring to have your counsel find some legal loophole (which is foreign to me, I must say)so that this proposal can be approved before the outdoor construction season begins in earnest. I've asked repeatedly you to ask our Story County legislators for an Attorney General's opinion regarding this matter. You declined to follow that advice as well. I called both my 3/27/01 WPage 2 of 2 state senator(Hammond)and representative (Griemann) Sunday, trying to briefly explain the situation and telling them I'd like to be able to tell you today that I had contacted them and could tell you they would submit this procedure to the Attorney General for an opinion if you asked them to do so. "Sure," they both said. So why don't you?