| Why
does the LRC need $77 million in taxpayer money? |
| No one's saying. The City hosts the LRC's "web site." (Until it has funding from some source, such as TIF financing, the LRC has no money it can call its own. Its only funding right now is money the City has advanced "informally" to it as "loans" and funded in part from the general revenue fund and in part from a Brownfields grant the City received from the EPA.) Its work is done through the consultants the City is paying and through City staff.) On the LRC web site, you'll see posted some two dozen documents—everything from the blight study to the LRC's proposed urban renewal plan to letters and memos going back and forth between the City, the LRC and Boulder County. What you won't find on the LRC's web site is any clue about why the LRC wants so much taxpayer money. One might think the LRC would explain why in its proposed urban renewal plan, since that document is intended to guide the LRC's work on its proposed, inexplicably expanded urban renewal district. But it doesn't. Nor does the LRC explain that in its consultant's report that is supposed to give a good-faith estimate of the TIF financing's fiscal impact on Boulder County. The only clue the LRC gives on why it needs $77 million is its statement that "[i]t is the intent of the [LRC] to provide incentives to stimulate private investment." This means, of course, giving some form of financial incentive to developers to "encourage" them to do what they do, i.e., develop land for profit. |
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