What you said about TIF

I got a considerable amount of feedback from readers about last week's column about cities' use of Tax Increment Financing and other incentives to encourage businesses to relocate within the Corridor.

“You nailed it,” one reader wrote. “I have lived in C'ville since 1996 and watched how the Council and City Manager use their aggressive approach to support their ‘build it - they will come' agenda with little regard for the people who have had longtime businesses or homes.”

But others were not so enthusiastic about my musings – which they thought drew a picture that painted their cities as too mercenary by half.

Hiawatha City Council Member Marty Bruns e-mailed to tell me that the City of Hiawatha has never initiated contact with any nearby business to “lure” them with incentives, although he can't speak for what developers may or may not do.

“When we do a review of each applicant who is soliciting a TIF award, we often ask them why they chose to move to Hiawatha,” he wrote. “The answer we get most frequently is that we are easier to work with as our staff is more timely in our responses to them, more responsive to their questions and that our staff tries hard to accommodate their needs.”

In fact, Bruns said, the City of Hiawatha has been told their TIF practices are a good example of how the program was intended to operate. The city limits TIF incentives to commercial businesses, usually for five years. If a business moves within that time, they must refund the awards.

“Our intent is to ease a new company's transition and enhance their ability to survive so they can provide jobs in the City,” he wrote. “We have no interest in raiding our neighbors as we recognize that is a short sighted tactic.”

On the south end of The Corridor, Deanna Trumbull, President of Trumbull Consulting, took umbrage at my insinuation that her company was trying to poach Iowa City businesses. “Quite frankly, if I were a successful and vibrant business owner inside or outside of this market and was not at least introduced to Iowa River Landing, I would find it odd and even insulting,” she wrote in an e-mail.

She told me in some cases, business owners had contacted her. And in any case, developers had been approaching Iowa City businesses to see if they wanted to expand to Iowa River Landing, not to try to steal them from downtown Iowa City.

That's the same way Coralville officials have characterized the eight-figure deal they offered Von Maur earlier this year. And I suppose it's not their problem if the company decided after taking it that their Iowa City store was redundant, after all.

According to news accounts, City Administrator Kelly Hayworth has said Coralville now has a policy against recruiting local businesses to relocate to Iowa River Landing, but it didn't when that Von Maur deal was in the works. Meanwhile, state legislators continue to work on possible TIF reform.

Just this week, Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, said there's a growing consensus about the need to make TIFs more transparent and to do something to prevent over-the-fence incentives from competing communities.

His House counterpart, Rep. Tom Sands, R-Wapello, had this to say, according to Gazette reporter Rod Boshart: "TIF has got to be addressed … I think if we don't get it under control, the abuses will continue to grow just because if it's OK for a handful of cities to do it, then it's probably OK for every city to do it."

In the meantime,

it's been suggested that a regional authority might help us think bigger when it comes to economic development. That seems like an idea worth pursuing.