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Liar's Poker is a popular bar game based on the serial numbers of
dollar bills, plus skill at bluffing. |
A great deal of time was spent wrangling over the proposed amendments to the 50-year PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) on Liberty Village at last night's Council meeting. The proposal ultimately failed even to
be put on the agenda, but as the evening progressed, I began to suspect
some folks were not being upfront about what they knew and when they
knew it.
While details of the PILOT have been discussed previously elsewhere (see my post here, and Bernice's here), my attention is attracted to the question of why the Council has dug its heels in so hard, so quickly and with so little discussion.
On the surface, several Councilors have complained of being rushed. Last
night they also expressed concerns that granting the PILOT before the
sale would leave no leverage against the new owners to perform the
improvements that are being promised.
Council President Rivers also insisted that $1.5 million had supposedly
been set aside previously under the current owners for improvements to
the property and there is no accounting for what happened to the funds.
Both the Mapp administration and the attorney for the purchaser were
unaware of any such assertion, but Rivers persisted.
While Councilors and several speakers from the audience were blaming the
Mapp administration for time constraints -- 'last minute politics being
thrown at you' is the way resident Mustapha Muhammad put it -- my ears
caught several references to the PILOT negotiations having gone on for more than a year.
Both the buyer's attorney, William Eaton, and Mapp's economic
development director Carlos Sanchez made mention of the time frame,
which places the origins of the proposed sale and PILOT amendment firmly
in the administration of former mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs. Sanchez
said he couldn't tell the Council why the Robinson-Briggs administration
had not followed through on the matter and politely reminded them that
he had only come on board on February 1.
But what really caught my attention was Councilor Storch's statement
that he recalled getting a phone call from Assemblyman Jerry Green's
office over a year ago inviting him to vet the proposal. Storch then
went on to add that he and 'two colleagues' went to the Assemblyman's
office and went over the proposal, but that that was his only prior
participation. He said he never knew anything else until it was brought
up at last week's Council agenda-setting session.
If the 'two colleagues' Storch mentioned so discreetly were fellow
Council members, then we have the puzzle of how some folks at the
Council table could have been surprised at the proposal. Not only that,
Councilor Rivers was council president last year> Is it possible she
would not have known if members of the governing body had been invited
to review the proposal at the Assemblyman's office?
Then there is the matter of the condition of the Liberty Village
complex, which many -- Councilors, Mapp administration and residents
alike -- deplored. The Housing Authority no longer manages the complex,
though it once did. Did conditions deteriorate on its watch? And if they did, why has no public outcry been made before this?
Former councilor Malcolm R. Dunn, a current Plainfield Municipal Utilities Authority (PMUA) commissioner offered some historical
context. He had been a Housing Authority commissioner along with
current PMUA executive director Dan Williamson when the original PILOT
agreement was crafted.
If the current Council has questions about why the PILOT was granted a
50-year term and never generated more than 6.28% on the gross shelter
rents until the current proposal to raise it to 10%, perhaps they should
quiz Mr. Dunn more closely.
From my point of view, it's ironic that Dunn, the man who engineered the
$1.2 million giveaway to retiring PMUA executives Watson and Ervin,
also managed to help engineer another giveaway from the public purse to
the owners of Liberty Village. And how much was that worth over the past
32 years? Councilor Reid has a point in raising the question, though I
doubt he will pursue it to its logical conclusion.
Lastly, there is burden that all of this has meant to the rest of Plainfield's property tax payers over the past 32 years.
Hundreds of children, if not more, have been accommodated by the
Plainfield Public Schools though the district has never received a dime
in school taxes from Liberty Village since its inception. This means
that the cost of educating all these children has been shouldered by the remaining taxpayers.
It we take into account all the apartment complexes in the city which
are subject to PILOTs and which are open to families (and not age
restricted like the Senior residences) and which do not contribute to
the support of the public schools, it is not hard to understand why
ordinary folks have questions about the value of PILOTs.
The buyer's attorney offered to meet with members of the Council to
answer their questions in an effort to reach some agreement to forestall
the deal's falling apart. I am hopeful that the buyers, the Mapp
administration and the Council can work this out.
Even though that will mean another special Council meeting -- O, the
drama! -- which will probably be necessary anyway, since the City will
most likely run out of money before the 2014 budget is finally adopted.
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