The Fort Wayne City Council meets tonight in Committee and Regular Sessions at 5:30 pm in room 128 of the City-County Building.
The agenda may be downloaded here, while the ordinances up for introduction may be downloaded here.
There will be a presentation by City Controller Pat Roller for the 2010 Civil City Budget.
Not too much of interest on the Committee Session’s agenda for this evening. Â To be introduced tonight – only introduced, no discussion:
S-09-09-20
AN ORDINANCE of the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Common Council approving and authorizing the execution of a lease for the acquisition, Renovation and Equipping of a building located at 200 East Berry Street, pledging certain revenues to the payment of rentals therefor, authorizing the issuance of bonds for such purposes, and regarding certain related matters
Also:
S-09-09-25
AN ORDINANCE of the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Common Council regarding the designation of the City as a “Recovery Zone” for purposes of sections 1400U-1, 1400U-2, and 1400U-3 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, As Amended
More information on what a Recovery Zone Economic Development Bond is may be found here. Economic development activities qualified under this program include:
- Capital expenditures paid or incurred for property in Recovery Zones.
- Expenditures for public infrastructure and construction of public facilities.
- Expenditures for job training and educational programs.
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Stephen- Maybe you don’t see anything being introduced at tonights council meeting that is of “much interest”, but there sure are some items that should be of particular concern to Allen County taxpaying residents –
S-09-09-25 is a door-opener for a massive attack on our county CEDIT revenues. The Federal Internal Revenue Code provisions being quoted, as recently ammended by congress, “allows” a county or a city of over 100,000 residents to float taxable bond issues (where they could have issued “tax-exempt” issues) with the county or city receiving a “refund” of 45% of the interest being charged by the bond purchaser – and the purchaser only receives 55% ????? The bond issue is to be repaid with revenues from LOCAL taxes – NO federal tax money is being made available for this program! This way, Obama’s and his other boys can claim “No tax increases on the federal level” – they just push it down to the local level thereby again screwing both the lender(bond purchaser) AND the taxpayer! This is ANOTHER METHOD TO SPEND MORE OF THE TAXPAYERS MONEY on projects of questionable need – like the purchase and fix-up of 200 East Berry Street!
The companion ordinance, S-09-09-20, to “do-the-hustle” by setting up the municipal authority’s selling of these bonds, they buy 200 East Berry and then lease it to the city with the city paying the lease payments from county CEDIT revenues. The above mentioned S-09-09-25 will be the first in a series of attacks on county CEDIT income for non-economic revitalization uses – in other words, “to expand local government” instead of investing for local economic expansion and development!
So the acquisition of 200 East Berry will occur with NO public hearing – and city attorney, Carol Taylor approves these ordinances as to their legality???? It’s another ” bill-of-goods”, Fort Wayne – AND the Casino is nerxt!
ps: Take a look at the “IRS Guidance On The New Build America Bond Program” – IR-2009-33, April 3, 2009 & IRS Notice 2009-26 – eleven pages of “IRS-Speak” which you can find at http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=206037.html
John, please read the post again – I said not too much of interest to be discussed in the Committee Session. To be introduced tonight – only introduced, no discussion: The two you mention are not up for discussion, only introduction.
Obviously I do feel the two are of interest since I mentioned them in the post.
As to the casino issue – I don’t think it’s the done deal everyone is making this out to be. That was not my sense at the Study Committee session and moving a license or making it into a “land-based” one is not as simple as just doing it. It would require legislative action that would need to consider the interests of treating existing licenses fairly. In other words if you allow a license in Gary to be converted into a land-based license, do you need to extend that to all the rest? You can’t do it for one and not the rest. That’s a major change, and one which some in the committee didn’t seem to accept, that would probably not succeed.
Besides, Steuben County seems to be courting the idea strongly. It’ll be interesting to see if any opposition shows up between now and the next Study Committee session.