The back story on this is the Caldwell East Urban Renewal agency made a verbal agreement with the King family, (aka Sun Valley Properties) to purchase and convert the property to a parking lot for TVCC. The reality of parking needs for TVCC did not materialize into a need for more parking and the City/URA backed out of the deal with the King family.
Meanwhile, the King family had started unwinding their business in Caldwell and out of frustration, high property taxes and profits not paying the bills the King family finally closed the doors. Property taxes on this building amount to over $8,000/year.
Anyone owning vacant commercial or industrial property in Caldwell are paying the price because of the city Elders wild a** spending, no home owners exemption for these guys, expect more donations to non property tax paying
ReplyDeleteentities.
Better to give it to the Salvation Army then to let the city Elders get it to try and correct their mistakes at TVCC.
Mr. Growler, what a perfect solution to all the vacant property downtown. The nonprofits can turn all of downtown into a huge center for the homeless. I can't figure out how anyone can own property in downtown and expect it to generate a profit with high assessed values to go with the excessively high levy rates in Caldwell. Nothing will change as long as the current Mayor has everyone convinced all is well in downtown.
ReplyDeleteDowntown Caldwell will probably never recover from the outright blunders of the Nancolas era. All the money flowing to the city from the growth we had up until 2008 will not be seen again for a good long while.
ReplyDeleteThe investment in downtown was less than superficial and now property owners are left with very little in the way of economic growth. Add to this the buildings downtown will cost more to bring up to code than they're worth. Add to this very little was done to keep what they had in downtown nor was there anything done to create the "live, work" part of Mr. Nancolas' oft heard prescription to revive downtown.
What we do have is another era of opportunity squandered in downtown Caldwell. It amazes me we have a city of 46,000 people and we don't even have a new car dealership in our city. Is downtown better today than it was 16 years ago before the Nancolas age of destruction?
ReplyDeleteDifference between fees, franchise fee, or tax is just semantics. If you use electricity you will pay it to Idaho Power and they will remit to the respective cities. There is a specific law dealing with it 50-329-A
It is an interesting law--1% may be levied without a vote of the people.
More than 1% up to 3% can be levied by either a vote of the people or council passing a resolution and getting power or gas company to agree
Then it goes to IPUC for final approval. Nampa expects to collect about $250,000/ year and with the increase I think would exceed $300,000
Ordinance in Nampa has restrictions on what it can be used for
Franchise fees are a revenue source for cities which are well hidden. I have discovered that franchise fees on trash collection in Nampa approach 20%. Caused a firestorm at city hall when I brought it up. A committee is now deciding what to do. I am not part of the negotiations so who knows what will be decided. City says franchise fee restrictions don't apply to garbage collection