It takes a village

The final deal has been announced for the East Village Development Plan. On the surface I guess it's good news. Of course as usual we as taxpayers are going to be very generous with economic development incentives. This blog is not a good venue to give you my analysis of the East Village TIF plan. At 214 pages it's a literary as well as financial masterpiece. I haven't made my way through all of it yet (but I will) to determine if said masterpiece belongs in the Fiction section. From what I can tell so far we're going to be giving up millions of dollars to make sure the poor developer makes a profit. We are getting rid of blocks of useless surface parking in what should be a dense urban area. But then again we're building between 2000-3000 new spaces. So much for creating need for transit. I haven't seen whether this falls under the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority (PIEA), the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority (LCRA) or both, but I'm sure there's plenty of tax abatement to follow. As I've said before, it's not the TIF but the tax abatement that really hurts. New buildings, new streets, sidewalks, curbs, sewers and utilities. New taxes? Not for at least 20 years. Good news? You decide.