Council takes another step backwards
It was something like a scene from a movie Wednesday night at the Atlantic City Council meeting. First there was a dramatic pause, while a dozen or so people waited expectantly.Then a stunned silence after the final vote had been cast and the bombshell exploded.
Last Wednesday the Atlantic City Council voted 4-3 to deny a $295,000 TIF application for a new hotel on the west side of town. Without that up-front funding, hotel officials said it would be difficult to get financing and the project would likely die. A $1.5 million project expected to generate over $54,000 a year in additional property taxes in the community had just disappeared and no one saw it coming.
Of course there was no reason anyone should have. Just a couple of weeks earlier three of the four dissenters had joined with the majority in a 6-1 vote to state the city's intent to pursue the bonding method for the project, which is what was requested by developers in their TIF application.
Almost immediately the four that voted against it all quickly voiced their support for the project, right after casting the votes that killed it. They all claimed their votes had nothing to do with the merits of the project just the method of funding the city was considering. They said they preferred a tax rebate rather than a TIF bond. But that option had been debated and voted on and ultimately rejected.
Just to be clear, what that meant was that, after discussing all the options, the council agreed by a vote of 6-1 that it intended to assist the project with a TIF bond. NOT a tax rebate, that idea was off the table once that vote passed. The council did NOT have the option of considering a different type of funding without starting the process over, and every one of the council members knew that because it was discussed at council meetings. The council intended to proceed with the bond issue, or so the majority at the time said.
That action was in effect the green light for developers to begin lining up their financing.
But Wednesday night three of the council members, Kern Miller, Pat Simmons and John Rueb, decided to change their mind and pull the rug out from under the feet of the developers of the project, and then actually had the nerve to claim they were shocked, shocked they said, that the company may now want to pass on the project.
In fact it was nothing short of a stab in the back and no amount of excuse making will change that.
Over the past few years it's become clear that there are members on this council that are clearly anti-development, going so far as to include personal attacks against individuals and the pursuit of personal vendettas. I don't know to what extent that played a role in Wednesday night's vote but the players have become all too familiar and the outcome all too common.
In the end it was just another in an increaingly long line of black eyes for the city.
Even in this case, in which all four claimed to support the project before killing it, the tone of the debate prior to the vote was on the accusatory side.
One council member suggested that it was unfair to ask the citizens to "pay" for the bond, even though every penny would have been repaid through property taxes. Somehow the project would be cheating us.
Another councilman told the developers, that, in effect, they would be bad neighbors if they didn't change their proposal and request the rebate instead.
Again, all of this after the council had already told them they "intended" to proceed with the bond. So much for keeping the city's word.
What makes this terrible decision doubly bad is that the new hotel would have been built on the west side of town in an area ripe for new development. It was a project that could have attracted other businesses, such as restaurants to cater to patrons staying in the 31 rooms planned for the new hotel.
The council voted against those businesses.
Chamber and Economic Development officials say that the availability of the additional rooms would have also opened the city up to more and bigger conferences and activities at the convention center. Bigger events means more people and more money spent in the community.
But the council voted against that.
All of this comes on the heels of the city being forced to return $100,000 Vision Iowa grant to the state because in five years they couldn't meet the requirements they had agreed to. Again there is a long list of excuses, but the bottom line is another project to enhance the community has been hurt along with the city's reputation.
Those that are responsible will no doubt deny all this. They will kick and scream and howl that they have been misrepresented and were only looking out for the best interests of the people. But they are wrong. Stagnation is not in the best interest of the community, and that, unfortunately, is what they voted for. Why they took that action, and I don't mean the lame excuses they've given, only they know.
This was a company that was ready to invest in the community, had planned to begin construction this fall and had already placed large orders with local companies. All that went away Wednesday night.
The city is in a competitive market when it comes to attracting new business, but unfortunately it appears to be a competition we are determined to lose. And that's a movie without a happy ending.