Kate Manizade Speaks Out At Council Meeting

I am opposed to resolution 1464 extending the TIF for the Village at SBY Lake. The owners of this property are not, in my opinion, entitled to such a subsidy, in part because it would be an abuse of the intent of the TIF. They are responsible for the blighting of this property due to neglect, and have caused a loss of tax revenue to the city from businesses they evicted, and from businesses that might now be there if they had redeveloped this place without insisting on a handout from Salisbury in the form of a $14 million TIF.

It’s gross distortion to claim the TIF will cost SBY taxpayers nothing. How it will work is that the Salisbury Mall Associates get the $14 million from bonds issued by SBY. SBY taxpayers, including those in their new development, will labor for the next 30 years under higher taxes to pay off those bonds, with interest, all the while paying to provide city services to the residents and businesses there. If that’s not a bad deal for SBY then nothing is.

My fellow concerned citizens and I have been called cavemen by Mr Comegys for opposing the illegal rezoning of this property to PDD, the Mayor has slandered us by claiming that the petitioners in that case have held up the demolition of the Old Mall, and now Mr Natelson in his LTE is saying I’m unreasonable because I don’t want to subsidize housing that my family probably couldn’t afford, for people who CAN afford it. Public comment tonight will be overwhelmingly against extension of this TIF, and something tells me it’s going to go right through 4-1. I’m not the only unreasonable one, though. Maybe something is wrong with this Mayor and Council.

I’ll let you in on something. According to the document I have in hand, signed by Mr Jacobs and filled out by city engineers, on the day of max consumption of water in the past five years, we were within a few million gallons per day of our present pumping/treatment capacity of 10.5 million gpd. A power outage would have meant a failure in the supply that day. Just do the math: I’ll be happy to provide you with the document and discuss it with you. There is no way SBY at present can supply water safely to their proposed behemoth 800 unit development and honor our commitments to Hearne and other approved developments. Where is the money to upgrade going to come from? I say use the $14 million for that, and if Mr Natelson and Dzaman don’t want that deal, then maybe they aren’t the right developers for that property.