From today's Landmark:
THE LANDMARK VIEW
The Village of Riverside on Monday night decided to buy a parcel of property on East Burlington Street, just east of the main commercial district. According to the village president and village manager, the purchase will go toward the creation of a parking lot.
While we don't think the village is through buying property in this area-the house next door to the one they're buying is for sale-you have to wonder exactly what the final solution will be for the property or properties and scratch your head at the expense for creating parking.
Just for the sake of argument, if the village ends up buying two properties to create a parking lot that can handle 30 or so vehicles, then it will have spent over $500,000-or over $16,000 per parking space.
What makes that tough to swallow is the village allowed the owners of the Village Center property at the corner of East Burlington Street and Longcommon Road to buy out 17 parking spaces they were lacking at the development site. At just $5,000 per parking space, the village is only netting $85,000 from developers. In other words, to make up for the parking that the Village Center lacks, the village is paying over double what it's receiving to replace it. That doesn't seem to be the greatest value for taxpayers. In fact, it's what would commonly be known as a bad deal.
Then again, the village could be formulating a plan that would provide something more than parking on the site or sites they're planning to purchase. If so, it'd be nice to know what the plan is. While we understand that pending real estate transactions can be shielded from public view in executive session, a discussion of the philosophy behind the land purchases might be a fine issue for discussion in open session.
Does the downtown area really need this parking? Where is the best location for such parking? Are there other reasons the village might want to purchase property (to maintain control over redevelopment, for example)?
In announcing the property purchase Monday night, none of those issues were addressed, leaving one to wonder exactly what the plan is. When it's all over, the village is going to expend over $300,000 to acquire and improve this property. That financing is being done through bonds, which are going to be paid for via the general fund--that is, by using property taxes.
It'd be nice to know the philosophy behind the move.
In addition, in light of the fact that the village will be paying so much more to create parking than it's getting from developers who don't include enough parking in their plans, the village needs to revisit the amount it's charging developers to buy out of the parking requirements.
It seems clear that $5,000 is nowhere near enough. Going forward, if developers are going to be offered this benefit, then they should pay a fairer share of the cost to create that parking elsewhere.
Nick Cariello and I protested this give away time and again, at Board meetings, at planning, in letters. But Momma and Pappa knew best, and so the Board sold the developers the alley for a paltry $15,000 and then handed what is in effect a subsidy to the developers of the VC, just as they did with the return of over $40,000 in permit fees to the builders of Delaplaine Crossing, and just as we are going to be doing over the next twelve years to whoever owns the Arcade building. (In that case the taxpayers will chip in about $450,000.) So if you add that up and include all the consultant fees and engineering studies and the zoning process that doesn't work and the money they propose to throw into laying bricks and concrete at Centennial and you start to push a million taxpayer dollars in handouts and unnecessary expenses. And they aren't through yet. This was just tactical spending. Strategic Planning is coming. And mark my words, our old friend TIF is not dead - just sleeping. He'll be back and back again until we finally throw the rascals out. And to the lady that thinks the brick on the VC compliments the water tower and it's proportions are fine, well that's why we have horse races.