Capital Improvement Board & Extending the “Temporary” Food & Beverage Tax
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 1/21/09 @ 10:18 am - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics
State representative Phil GiaQuinta has submitted a bill that will create a new city-controlled board to run the Coliseum and control the county’s 1% food and beverage tax. You remember that tax right? That’s the one that was “temporarily” put in place to fund the Coliseum. And then it was extended to fund the Coliseum expansion. And now it looks like they want to “temporarily” extend it again - but for what you ask?
The board would use non-property tax revenue to pay for projects that would enhance downtown and benefit the entire community, said Ozzie Mitson, business and legislative liaison for Mayor Tom Henry.
You know a cynical person might think this is measure being taken to save their ass if Harrison Square fails. Nah, surely not.
But the bill is not meant to be a money grab for the food and beverage tax nor is it intended to pay for Harrison Square, Mitson said. Tax revenue from a planned hotel adjacent to Parkview Field is supposed to pay off a bond that built the new minor-league baseball field.
And the tooth fairy might buy up the remaining condos. Look, the argument that the food and beverage tax should be extended to fund the Coliseum expansion was tenuous at best. But nobody could argue that the original intent was to fund downtown development projects so let’s call this what it is - a tax increase. That’s the only honest definition…
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6 Responses to “Capital Improvement Board & Extending the “Temporary” Food & Beverage Tax”
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“Enhance downtown” OH that’s a cute word! So now that we have “revitalized downtown”, now we need to “enhance downtown”. SWEET !!! wow, can’t wait to see what that is.
This is extremely unethical. The private sector should be building these entertainment venues; using stolen revenue from the people of Fort Wayne is simply ludicrous.
Someone needs to call out the CIB on this. Indy has been doing the same thing with the “temporary” 1% Hoosier Dome F&B tax since 1984. Here it is 25 years later and we still have the tax. The bonds that the tax was supposed pay matured long ago. The Indianapolis CIB simply kept issuing new bonds to pay for new projects (along with some corporate welfare to the Colts). They tax rate was recently doubled to pay for our new stadium. I would venture a guess that Ft Wayne doesn’t have quite the same demand for convention and visitor space as Indy does though. Perhaps your government would prefer to re-appropriate an existing tax in lieu of putting a public takeover of your HS project to a public referendum. Hold their feet to the fire on this one guys.
[...] should take the time to read this story in the News Sentinel. The article is entitled “Food tax funds go to improvements.” [...]
“Deception” is a political strategy that covertly rears its ugly head so as to garner little scrutiny from the public. This is why Fort Wayne still has the so called “temporary” food and beverage tax.
Those who so cleverly lured this tax into place never had any intention of it being “temporary,” but named it as such because it was “shrouded as something good for the community” making it a certainty to get the public to go along, without having tempers flare.
I can only surmise that the county has become dependent on this tax and has no plans of rescinding it at all.
[...] tax permanent. This was a blatant tax increase for the residents of Allen County as I described in this post. [...]has submitted a bill that will create a new city-controlled board to run the Coliseum and [...]