Springsteen Next Weekend - a TIF Alternative?

In my last TIF post, I was pretty negative. In my heart of hearts, though, I'm a positive person, looking for answers to society's problems, and hoping to leave this world a little better for my time here.

So, today, I offer up my alternative to TIF. My only request is that you erect a huge statue of me after I'm gone.

First, let's focus on what we all want. We all want a thriving, interesting, active downtown. We all want good jobs downtown. We all want people to use public transportation. We all want to help the homeless (actually, that's a lie - we all say we want to help the homeless, but many just want them to disappear). We all want our basic services, such as police protection and snow removal, funded.

These are all good things.

Unfortunately, someone in Kansas City's past convinced us that the way to get these things is to give tax money to real estate developers and lawyers. I don't mean to cast blame, but I distinctly recall that the first person to describe TIF to me was Jim Glover. While Jim Glover is certainly an extremely handsome man, he is not the sort to chair the social committee. The fact that Jim was seduced by the charisma of developers and real estate lawyers is where we made our first wrong turn on our path to a lively, thriving, exciting downtown.

With a logic that baffles me, our fine city has decided that the best way to get a fun and lively downtown scene is to funnel our tax dollars to developers and their lawyers. The result is that we are going to be spending $79 million this year on TIF plans, and their most visible success is relocating a lot of IRS people from Kansas City to Kansas City.

Do you realize how much money $79 million is?!?!?! And what we could do with that money to give us a thriving, cool downtown?! And I'm not talking about some dim, distant day when the Penguins finally give up on Pittsburgh - my plan could start next weekend! I guarantee that my plan would have an impact immediately.

Here it is - there are 52 weekends in a year. Each weekend, we're going to spend a MILLION FREAKING DOLLARS on a kick-ass party downtown. I checked the Gomer's ads, and we can get 12 packs of Boulevard (gotta support the locals!) for $10.48, so, doing the math, we can get a million bottles of Boulevard to hand out FOR FREE - that's two and a little extra for every man, woman and child in Kansas City - for $833,333. The extra $166,666 we'll use to get Bruce Springsteen and a whole bunch of porta-potties.

And the thing is, we could do this EVERY WEEKEND, FOR FREE, and WE'D STILL BE SAVING $27 MILLION off what we're paying real estate developers to bring us IRS agents. IRS agents, or rock stars - what kind of choice is that?

Think of the spin-off benefits! People would not want to drive downtown and park, and, with all that beer flowing, they shouldn't drive home. Light rail would be jam packed, as would the Max and every other form of public transportation available. The businesses downtown would make a retail killing - pretzels, pizza, and tasteless t-shirts are some products with known appeal to this sort of crowd. And we could tax everything! Heck, the homeless could even recycle the bottles and make money off them, too!

Now, if we threw a million dollar party every single weekend, can you imagine how many people would come here every weekend, and how many would find a way to stay here? Omaha, St. Louis, Wichita, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver - they'd all be ghost towns on the weekends.

Remember, this is still $27 million LESS than what we're paying the developers and their lawyers. You'd have to pay for my statue out of that, but you could use the rest for other stuff.

Maybe you'd want to take the 8 solid blocks on the north side of downtown that has been flattened by - umm, yeah, civic-minded real estate developers again - and put up a whole bunch of Butler buildings (local industry again) and stock them with Nintendo Wiis and pinball games, that people could play for FREE. Maybe we could permanently shut down some of the roads that the city has closed for construction and have the coolest go-cart tracks ever through downtown. Maybe we could dig another huge hole or two, and have some awesome moto-cross space!!

The mind boggles when you have $79 million of taxpayer money to play with. Maybe, you'd just want to have the parties, and use the extra $27 million for basic services, like police and snow removal. It's your money - it ought to be your choice.