The Bush Library: No New Texas

Pearls Without Price   bush-dallas-string-of-urban-pearls.jpg

While the Bush Legacy Project floats fanciful interpretations of the Administrations history as the days draw nigh,  in Dallas they are dropping some of the masks.

Recall all that Dallas economic development the George W. Bush Library was to “spark” [when it wasn’t erasing the immortal stain of the Kennedy assassination] in its gritty, big city Dallas locale?

Well, you ain’t gonna see it.

Just in time for the legacy edifice, Dallas has launched a Tax Increment Financing [TIF] district to suck up any money development around the Bush Library might generate for local taxing bodies.

Mr. President has bored you before with this, but pay attention.

TIFs are magic governments. They take a stretch of land, and proclaim that the value of all future development doesn’t get taxed for schools, sewers or police. The money flows instead to the TIF, which spend it on local amenities, which increases the value of the development, but that’s not going to pay taxes either.

The Bush Library will anchor the North end of a “string of urban pearls” along mass transit.

Feel The Future  bush-dallas-interurban.jpg

The Dallas Business Journal thoughtfully explains how You will benefit, somehow, someday:

Cities use TIFs to stimulate development by allowing developers in specific areas to reinvest new property tax dollars spurred by the TIF to fund infrastructure improvements in the zone, instead of having the additional dollars go into the city’s general fund. When the TIF lapses, the city benefits from a more valuable tax base.

As Sage of Prescott Hollow George W. President Bush frequently reminds  us, by then we’ll be dead.

All this urban glamour will unfold in an area blighted as “an older, industrial area, circa 1950s,” and in thirty years they can do it all over again.

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