Whitewater residents need to decide if they are willing to accept more urbanization before the progressives on the CDA and City Council decide for them.
Apparently my city taxes going up 42% over the last two years is not enough.
Kim McDarrison has a great article reviewing last week’s Whitewater Community Development Authority meeting. Here, I plan to add additional thoughts and facts.
The big $$ topic within the city sure seems to be housing. I sure wish it were fixing the lakes or fiscal responsibility, or bringing businesses into Whitewater; instead the city via the CDA is toying with disrupting the free market with TIF money incentivizing multifamily homes.
In the past, TIF has typically been used to incentivize business. Progressives have been willing to subsidize housing via TIF more and more.
I really hope the city and CDA does not follow thru with this.
My quick explanation of TIF, particularly for a builder:
A builder builds a massive multifamily housing project. Builder gets tax breaks for many years on the housing project. These taxes come from (essentially) the same pot as our police, fire, etc. This tax break would be on builder’s city taxes, almost directly from the hard working citizens of Whitewater.
It’s a shell game. The rich get richer with YOUR MONEY.
Apparently, my City of Whitewater taxes going up 42% over the last two years may not be enough.
Per McDarrison’s article:
Recounting information delivered during the roundtable event by Erik Doersching, executive vice president and managing partner of Illinois-based Tracy Cross and Associates, Inc., a real estate marketing consulting firm, she said the company’s Whitewater-specific study showed “that there has not been sufficient enough housing within recent years, which has kind of made this pent up demand, and it’s not just single family housing, It’s multifamily housing …
Crazy huh? A bunch of realtors want more housing? There is a saying out there that 100% of the time advisors agree with whoever paid them.
But the information given is completely contradictory. The data also shows that Whitewater’s vacancy rate (per the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission presentation) is 4-6%; pretty standard. And university enrollment is dropping like a rock. This will impact student housing double as the university will start to mandate in order to fill the dorms.
I will share my recent experience with the housing roundtables. I have several good friends that attended a housing roundtable at Evergreen in Elkhorn. (I am going to admit ignorance here and tell you that I am not sure if this is the same roundtable).
Before the roundtable, I was speaking with my friends and they brought up the Evergreen roundtable. They told me, unsolicited, that the roundtables were a joke.
The two biggest factors impacting housing prices right now are inflation and interest rates. Both being the direct result of our federal government printing $400M every hour of every day (and growing).
There is no close third as far as factors go for housing. There is nothing the City of Whitewater can do about inflation or interest rates.
So I raise some questions:
· Do you really want to subsidize rich builders for more multi-family housing? Because it is coming….
· Is there a better way for Whitewater to spend $1M, $3M or more???
· How will any subsidy for this apartment impact impact police, fire, and schools?
· Don’t we have enough to worry about?
· Why this builder?
· Why such a dramatic shift to multi-family housing?
· What happens when the inevitable market crash happens? (I will tell you… all this hard earned taxpayer money will have been wasted.)
· Who is this additional housing meant for?
There is nothing noble or moral about taking money from the hard-working taxpayers of Whitewater and distributing it to wealthy builders.
There will certainly be more to come.
Anyways, subscribe here.
Love to hear your comments.
-mike
Personal note here: I wish I had more time as I have a lot of topics. I have gotten a lot of feedback regarding my podcast with Henri Kinson; most of it positive but definitely not all. At some point I will discuss.
Discerning Whitewater 