Robbing taxes vs. creating self sufficiency

Collinsville and Belleville are both in the midst of considering how to redevelop truly blighted areas of their communities, but one wants to use property taxes robbed from other government units and the other sales taxes generated by the new development.

The preferable solution should always be for a development to fund itself.

Collinsville leaders plan to establish a tax increment financing district along Illinois 157 close to Caseyville and along Collinsville Road to Fairmount Park. Leaders were touting the district as a way to clean up the area leading to Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.

First, there’s still a whole lot of blight in State Park Place that this proposal won’t touch because the businesses are outside the Collinsville city limits. Weeds and trash and derelict businesses will still greet those heading to the Mounds, and the city will have established a decades-long theft of property taxes from other government units — chiefly the schools — without being able to spruce up the area closest to the Mounds.

Add to that the city’s poor history of predicting winners, with two of its three tax increment financing districts failing to produce anything. Then there is the well-established problem that the districts put city leaders in the position of using property tax dollars to bet on new business potentially at the cost of the loyal, long-suffering older merchants.

By contrast Belleville is considering a 1 percent sales tax for a special business district at the decaying strip mall where the old Mad Pricer grocery store was housed at 6401 W. Main St. If it goes forward, the developer will pay the $30,000 for the study and the development will generate its own incentive dollars.

No vampire-like property tax drain from local students or refusal to die because city leaders are afraid to put a stake through its heart at the two-decade expiration date. Older merchants have a 1 percent advantage because taxes are less at their stores.

Collinsville leaders should proceed with caution. Belleville seems ready to roll.

This story was originally published March 27, 2016 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Robbing taxes vs. creating self sufficiency."