Quote Originally Posted by 313WX View Post
Fair enough.

However, isn't the purpose of putting all of city's eggs in one basket to increase revenue in this one desirable area to the point where we have enough to improve services all over the city?

Isn't it defeating the purpose if these places aren't paying property taxes [[just a commuter tax mostly, which actually equals to what most Detroit homeowners & residents pays when combinng their income and property taxes), and are only investing in downtown/midtown BECAUSE of the property taxe breaks [[thus if the breaks were to ever go away the amount of investment could level off or reverse)?

You could argue the difference is made up by the wealthier folks being attracted who are paying the income tax, but the vast majority of residents were attracting aren't making the $75,000+ incomes that we want to make up for the loss of property tax revenue, but they're poor college students or recent college graduates who, at the most, are making $50,000 per year
[[and if they're hired by Dan Gilbert's companies, more like $25,000 to $35,000, which doesn't amount to much in yearly taxes).
You make good points.

I think the problem here is that the data is unavailable...or, at best, unclear. For me personally, I know I wouldn't live here without the tax breaks. But on a global sense is it net positive or net negative? I don't know.

However, isn't the purpose of putting all of city's eggs in one basket to increase revenue in this one desirable area to the point where we have enough to improve services all over the city?


The only beef I have with this is that we'll never have enough revenue to improve services all over the city. The city's too big and our problems to expensive. Rather than offer 25% of the necessary services to 100% of the city...which will lead to everyone exiting the city....let's provide 100% of the necessary services to 25% of the city...and build a sustainable foundation.

Politically hard to say that publicly, but that's really the issue here.