I’m voting no tomorrow, August 24 — against giving our local government leaders the right and power to decide which businesses will be eligible for property tax exemptions for as long as the next decade. They’re calling the tax exemptions “incentives” to attract businesses, ostensibly to create jobs.
I’ve never believed in paying somebody off, bribing somebody, or giving something to someone to encourage them to do business with me personally, and I don’t believe in doing it as a city or as a county. Really, bottom line, if it wouldn’t be okay behavior for you personally, or for yourself professionally, then why is this kind of behavior okay when a government does it?
I’ve read all the arguments for voting yes, but the bottom lines are this: a) I think it’s bad business to pay someone off to do business with you; and b) this vote requires a huge faith in the decisions reached by our local leaders — because they’ll be the ones deciding which businesses get the tax breaks. I’m already stunned by how poorly I feel our local leaders analyze, discuss, evaluate, and work through decisions that involve millions and millions of dollars. I don’t feel their track record warrants the faith in them they’re asking us to have. And here’s why:
In 2004, the City of Sarasota gave land and about $1.7 million to cover impact fees for the Whole Foods Market downtown to serve people who are well-off enough to buy ready-made dinners and organic produce and the like. In the meantime, our same city leaders have let Winn-Dixie’s much-needed grocery in an under-served, under-employed, and under-the-poverty-line section of town just walk away without a bit of effort, to the best of my knowledge, to stop that from happening. Look at the neighborhoods around these two stores, look at the people who live in them, and then you do the math. Where are the incentives to keep Winn-Dixie?
Several City Commissioners — in the name of economic development — were ready to sign away the much-used, and not a dime-subsidized Sarasota Municipal Auditorium to Ringling College for ONE DOLLAR A YEAR.
Do I need to remind readers about the roughly $5 million — FIVE MILLION DOLLARS, FOLKS — our city and county commissioners spent in pursuit of the Red Sox — for a “deal” that was never anywhere near real?
Do we need to revisit the nearly $800,000 the city commissioners gave away to the New York Times-owned Sarasota Herald-Tribune to help it offset the costs of building new offices on Main Street, at a time when we all knew that newspapers were already economic dinosaurs and when the NYT Regional Newspaper group had already gone on record saying the company’s goal was to build downtown to be “as close to the center of the community as we can manage”? Sarasota leaders gave away 800 large to convince a business to do what it was already planning to do? For a business that has probably laid off more workers in the past few years than it currently even has on staff? Is that really what constitutes “economic development” or “community redevelopment” or “job creation”?
Winslow LifeRaft – makes rafts for Boeing – was recently lured from Desoto County to Sarasota County with $650,00 in incentives from our local leaders. The President of Winslow said that, in addition to the $650k, the proposed property tax breaks — the ones that haven’t even been voted on yet — were a key reason Winslow is coming to Sarasota. This company has no loyalty to a community – it was in Osprey before uprooting and going to Desoto because of the incentives offered by that county– that was in 1999 I think. So now their 10-year incentives are dried up and so they come to Sarasota for another decade of living off the backs of the mom and pop businesses here and then, dollars to doughnuts, they’ll be off and running again to whatever county is offering up the highest incentives then.
Insurer Universal North America has had its US headquarters in Sarasota since 2003 and they by all accounts love having their roots here, and were looking to consolidate. So our county leaders threw $210k in cash incentives to encourage the company to consolidate its complete headquarters and facilities here. Yes, the company plans to add about 80 jobs but only 20 of those will be hired locally. Folks, the company was planning to CONSOLIDATE — IT HAD GONE ON RECORD SAYING IT LOVED HAVING ITS ROOTS HERE — it was probably coming here anyway. But we gave them a half-mil.
Even if they were on the fence, we all have to ask ourselves: Do we really want to make our economic beds with businesses that will only do business with us if we bribe them with rebates and incentives? Is this really the standard for attracting business to which we aspire as a community?
Isn’t there a better way to build our economy than by cozying up to fickle businesses and industries whose modus operandi is to pull up stakes and move whenever and wherever someone dangles a fresh, new, bigger carrot.
I know I’m a throwback to another era, but tell me, really, does it go down well to know you have to pay someone to do business with you? When did bribing become the norm? And, truly, if it is the norm, do we have to lower ourselves to it?
I say no.