Working My Way Through the Logic

OK, I can see that the downtown parking lots need fixing up.

OK, I can see that having better parking lots would make for a nicer downtown.

But a special taxing district that would last for 23 years? Seems to me that the solution is much larger than the problem. Why not just fix the parking lots?

Hm, maybe it's the fact that creating a TIF would give the city the right to acquire property either through purchase or through eminent domain (page 16)? So that the downtown can be reshaped according to the vision of the city planning department, rather than through the choices of the people who actually own property down there? Or does that sound too paranoid? And why the odd boundaries on the map? Three corners of 8th and Maine are blighted but the fourth corner isn't? And only half of the block on the south side of Maine between 8th and 9th is blighted -- cross the alley and you're in the "unblighted" half?

The downtown is in dire need of rejuvenation, that is for sure. But if I was a property owner in the proposed TIF district, I'd be looking to get out before the city decided I was "unsuitable" and told me to fix up or sell.