Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 63. Sunrise is 6:46 and sunset is 4:32 for 9 hours 46 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 27.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1851, Melville’s Moby-Dick is published in the United States.
At the November 4th meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, representatives of Ehlers, a financial advising firm, explained how they could assist Whitewater in evaluating the appropriate amount of tax incremental financing, if any, for Whitewater development projects. (See relevant portion of the meeting, above.) Tax incremental financing is a public financing mechanism that designates a specific tax area (a tax incremental district) and uses the increase in property tax revenue generated by subsequent development within that district to pay for the project’s costs.
(Note well: only taxes on the increased value, the incremental tax revenue, from the development stays within the district to pay the costs of a development project. The tax revenue derived from the initial value of the district when that district is formed continues to go to a community’s general revenues.)
Whitewater has had challenges with tax incremental financing for many years. Those problems are not the consequence of plans made over the last few years — they are problems from the previous few decades. (Those contending otherwise, having produced by their own efforts only failure upon failure, are either deficient in long-term memory or dissembling in narration. They are free to pick for themselves between the two deficiencies.)
Whitewater now has a city government that seeks a financial firm to follow and evaluate proposed projects as those projects unfold. A review like this would be a pro forma review. (In Whitewater’s case, it would mean a financial assessment of a proposed tax-increment-financed project, although the Latin term — literally, for the form — has other connotations and uses.)
Yes and yes again. This local government should proceed deliberately — seeking the best, expecting the best (and doing its best). It’s right that our fifteen thousand residents should have better than they have had.
As always: Whitewater deserves the highest standards. The addition of a review like this will add to the modernization, indeed normalization, of policy in this city.
Blue Origin successfully lands its New Glenn rocket booster after launch: