From the Richmond Palladium-Item:
Richmond Common Council tonight will continue and might even turn up the volume on a long-promised community conversation during a scheduled public hearing on how far and where the city goes to private taxpayer incentive for retail development.
The public is likely to hear council members and those appearing before them make all sorts of arguments about the needed use or the potential abuse of using taxpayers’ Economic Development Income (EDIT) Tax dollars to advance retail and retail employment interests, specifically for construction of a road for a new retail village, East Side Commercial Park LLC.
It’s an important discussion and, for the immediate future, an important vote on a specific project. We do not envy council members the difficult choices ahead.
But important crossroads are typically at those places where hard choices must be made, and where consequences good and bad accompany the choices.
As a community, certainly as a newspaper, we welcome the retail but regret the taxpayer subsidy. By their own arguments, council members have, we think, helped shape the case against it. Noting, for example, that the proposed road is in one of the highest traffic count, most marketable retail areas of the city only begs the question of why taxpayer subsidy should even be needed.
But then there is this: How long before one kind of local government intervention in the private market invites calls, demands even, for another?
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http://www.pal-item.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013308050009
