Part of the State of Missouri Tax Increment Financing (TIF) law also allows for eminent domain to be used to support private development projects. What essentially happens is that the local or state government approves a redevelopment agreement and TIF financing for a project and the developer can then ask the government to take private property within the area of the TIF supported project. If the government agrees (it almost always does) then the government seizes the property and sells it to the developer for the offer price.
If the owner of the seized property does not think the price reflects the actual value of the property then they go to court to get a higher price. Notice I didn’t say they go to court to fight the taking of their property. Currently, it is not possible to contest the taking under Missouri law after the legislation, local or state, authorizing the TIF and redevelopment agreement have been passed and signed into law. It’s only possible to contest the price. And you are only awarded market value of the property when you do win. So legal fees come out of what you win, as do any other costs you bear to fight for the fair price for your property. Even if you win in court, you still don’t get everything to which you would be entitled if you sold it willingly without eminent domain.
This is truly a lot of what we are fighting for. Simple property rights. The right to live unmolested in your own home, or operate your business on your property, without having to move on just because the government decided to give your property to someone else who is promising that they will do something with the property that will generate increased taxes. Note that I said “promising”. They don’t have to prove anything. They just have to present the documentation required by the TIF statute and the government has to approve it. Once that is done, anyone in the way of a proposed development is basically out of luck. There are essentially no standards in place for how rigorous that documentation has to be. Being unreasonable in light of actual financial conditions will not invalidate it. And only having vague promises by some random Podunk bank to finance only part of the project will also not invalidate it.
This is where our local government comes in. Our Board of Aldermen and Mayor wholeheartedly approved this project just last year. None of the Alderpersons I spoke to before the vote to approve this project had the least concerns that it might go sour; not the 5th ward Alderperson April Ford-Griffin, not the 19th ward Alderperson Marlene Davis, nor any of the others. In fact Alderperson Davis told me personally that she wasn’t concerned about any problems because “the lawyers would write the agreements so that the city couldn’t be hurt”. It seems her confidence was misplaced in at least a couple different such projects like the Bottle District (city now being sued for over $2.2 million) and One City Center where the developer went under (but not before the city guaranteed the repayment of the TIF bonds with general revenue funds). So who’s incompetent? The city lawyers drafting the agreements or the politicians approving them. I vote for both.
Other wholehearted supporters of the project on the Board of Aldermen were Casey Starr-Triplett, Freeman Bosley, Sr., and Steven Conway. I wonder if they all supported the Bottle District fiasco just as much?
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