O’Fallon, Missouri, Happy To Be Pimped

Geez, you lonely municipalities, so busy courting developers that you’re okay when those same developers refer to your relationship as one of employee-employer?

A last-minute change to a proposed tax deal has kept alive plans for a housing development on the polluted site of a former trailer park.

Under the change, University City-based Highland Homes will get 13 years of tax abatement, not 20 as originally requested.

The city “thought they were going to get pimped for 20 years,” said Bob Shallenberger, co-owner of Highland Homes. “They’re not.”

After the change was made, the O’Fallon City Council voted 7-1 to create a “community improvement district” to reimburse Highland Homes an estimated $2.2 million in property and sales taxes to clean up asbestos dumped at the site.

He only talks like that because he loves you, unlike the other municipalities.

Although I wouldn’t say the description isn’t entirely unfair; after all, through a CID, you’re going to take money from the johns, formerly called “citizens,” and give them to him.

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