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Letter: Objects to State Road tax deal

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March 7, 2010

Kudos to City Councilmember Carol Klinger for her stance on the State Road development. Taxpayers should ask themselves -- why are we giving Stark Enterprises the privilege of using our money (of the purchase price, 75 percent will be placed in an escrow account for use by Stark) to help fund a project to be put on land that we gave him for a song?

Even worse, the spin being thrown at the School Board is that they should be happy with the "extra" revenue from the property taxes this project will generate. The proposal to the Board is that they accept $170,000 in tax revenue on this land annually for the schools. This is more than the $69,000 the property generated for the schools when it was the State Road Shopping Center, but far short of the $500,000 in annual tax revenue this property should generate if it was taxed at its full value. The main thing that can help alleviate the need to put a new levy on the ballot is tax money raised from new development, especially commercial development.

Because the city wants to divert tax dollars to repay the debt they have incurred buying this land, they are asking that tax revenues from this development remain virtually stagnant for 30 years. Half of us will be dead before the city or schools realize any benefit from this development.

This PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program takes the taxes that would normally enrich the city and school coffers and uses it to pay ourselves back. It's like stealing from Peter to pay Paul, except we are Peter and Paul. The school district stated at its January meeting that it will most likely place a new levy on the November ballot. Seems to me they need their portion of the tax bill.

Kellie Patterson

Cuyahoga Falls




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 2 Total Comments
2.
    Posted by Mary Neely March 8, 2010
Maybe it's because for once you listened to Kellie instead of what is being said about Kellie.

1.
    Posted by CF BS Detector March 7, 2010
For once Kellie Patterson says something that makes sense to those with more than half a brain.

WTG Kellie. We look forward to more of your thinking in the future.

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