Jackson Jambalaya

$1.77 MILLION in financing costs. Staggering.

I missed that. where did ya see it? Thanks.

(Incremental (annual) ad val (city + county) collections * term) minus principal.

TIFs cost taxpayers more money than other borrowing options available for these types of infrastructure improvements.

But nobody really wants to talk about that.

As for what is missing. There is a heap of fees, costs and spiffs payable for professional services to any number of Tom, Dick, Harry and Bettys -- likely including City Attorney Teeuwissen -- buried in each one of those TIF deals for which no schedule or detailed listing is provided to the public, or, at least not in the documents they provided to you.

What is really a travesty for Jackson taxpayers is that those add-ons are non-recurring costs that get rolled into the bond deal. In other words, while Jacksonians will realize the benefits from the infrastructure for decades to come the fee, cost or spiff is a one-time benefit only. So Attorney Z receives a fee for services rendered during the process but that one-time benefit (expense) gets paid out of bond proceeds to be recouped with interest by the incremental ad val for 20 years.

As for Attorney Teeuwissen, when this was Melton we know the JFP raised hell and spewed fury for months to acquire a copy of SORE's contract. No surprise that they haven't rushed out to publish Pieter's to see if he is getting a similar happy payment for the bonds. David Watkins got a piece of the JPS bond action for all the years he served as their attorney. No different arrangement than what was provided for in SORE's contract.

The Timber Falls developers should have gotten approval for a neighborhood convenience store in their plan. Then they could have also asked for a kick back of sales taxes for 10 years so that they, ostensibly, could break even. They obviously weren't paying attention to the other scams being played in the city.

Well guess what? I filed a public records request yesterday for a listing of all attorneys, law firms, bond advisers, and similar parties getting fees from these bonds and also a schedule of their fees and/or projected fees.

What you ought to publish Mr. Kingfish is the tax increment financing plan for River Hills. If ever there has been a taking of public tax dollars for private gain that one is it.

The current city attorney is not receiving any fees from this TIF or any other City bond deals. That arrangement was retired with Ms. Evans.

Thanks, Kingfish for all the information that U have provided during the past year !!!