{"id":33,"date":"2012-01-24T13:54:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T19:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/missouriinsight.com\/site\/?p=33"},"modified":"2012-01-24T13:54:32","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T19:54:32","slug":"home-improvement-chain-understands-risks-of-community-improvement-districts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/24\/home-improvement-chain-understands-risks-of-community-improvement-districts\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Improvement Chain Understands Risks of Community Improvement Districts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Springfield has recently become as district-crazy as the larger cities in the state, creating improvement districts to benefit Hy-Vee and other retail developments.  Through the improvement districts, the city pays for improvements to make an area hospitable to a private development and then levies an additional sales tax on purchases made at the development to recapture those outlays.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I&#8217;m against helping some developers out at the expense of other development types.  The government should not pay favorites in this way.  If a private citizen is to build a house or whatnot, he has to pay to hook it up to the infrastructure.  But if the private citizen is a development corporation with enough clout and promises of jobs and sales&#8211;regardless of whether those sales are merely moving sales from another retailer in the area to the new one with the additional sales tax levy&#8211;then the districts happen.<\/p>\n<p>But a Wisconsin-based home improvement center <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news-leader.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=2012201170311\" target=\"_blank\">wants no part of the CID where it wants to open<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Menards, however, does not want to be included in a 1 percent sales tax Community Improvement District the council previously approved for the Hickory Hills Marketplace.<\/p>\n<p>The CID tax would pay for certain infrastructure improvements as tax revenues roll in over time.<\/p>\n<p>According to a council bill explanation, &#8220;One of the conditions of Menards locating at the development is that their site not be included in the CID.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Having a CID tax in place potentially could make Menards products more expensive.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They do a lot of business on a large scale, like prefabricated home kits,&#8221; said Mayor Jim O&#8217;Neal. &#8220;That extra percent is probably not something they really want. I think the necessary improvements can be made without them.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s quite obvious when you&#8217;re a contractor spending thousands of dollars per purchase the difference between buying it at Menards or buying it at Meeks.<\/p>\n<p>On smaller purchases, like groceries and department store items, it&#8217;s easier to lose sight of that 1% extra you&#8217;re paying.  It&#8217;s only an extra dollar per $100 trip, but if you&#8217;re cumulatively spending thousands of dollars a year, you&#8217;re cheating yourself of those dollars if you shop at a store in a CID.<\/p>\n<p>Good for Menards for opting out, although they&#8217;re doing it for the principle of being competitive and making profit, not the principle that special favors for esteemed land developers are morally wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Springfield has recently become as district-crazy as the larger cities in the state, creating improvement districts to benefit Hy-Vee and other retail developments. Through the improvement districts, the city pays for improvements to make an area hospitable to a private development and then levies an additional sales tax on purchases made at the development to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}