For years, industrial sites that once fueled the city’s economy have sat idle and deteriorating in and around residential areas. Now, the brownfields are presenting an opportunity for residents to re-invent their neighborhoods.
In Troy, New York,... the 29th richest man in the world is being given more than 300,000 taxpayer dollars to open a restaurant.
Meet George Soros. He owns Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Specifically, his company – Soros Strategic Partners – owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
.But Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has come calling. And it has found just the building it wants.
The building has almost $220,000 in back taxes owed on it.
Now, typically, if you buy a property with any liens against, you pay those.
...Unless you’re Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
In this instance, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has pressured the local industrial development agency into paying the back taxes on the building it wants to buy. That’s $218,000.
Further, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is getting a five-year deferment on the property tax that improvements on its property would have otherwise obligated it to. That five-year lag will continue for 20 years.
Meaning that Dinosaur Bar-B-Que will spend the next two decades paying less than its fair share of property taxes – while the locally owned businesses against which it competes will have to pay their full obligation.
But wait, there’s more.
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is also being given exemption from $60,000 in sales tax for materials used to improve its building, and the $53,000 fee for recording its mortgage is being waived.
Let’s do the math on that. Without even considering the five-year property-tax lag, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is being given $330,000 to come to Troy.
To open a restaurant.
Which will employ cooks and waitresses.
And compete against locally owned mom-and-pop restaurants, all of which are required to pay their taxes and which have received not a dime of taxpayer money.
And let’s not forget that the guy who owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has a personal fortune of some $11 billion. This guy is the 29th-richest person in the world.
This is an illustration of just how bad things can get, of how the insanity of “economic development” can waste money and strain credibility.
...Because private enterprise should be private enterprise. If you want to expand your business, you should pay for it. No business should be subsidized, it should be sink or swim – that is the free market, that is capitalism.
And that is what we must defend.
And insanity like this Dinosaur Bar-B-Que deal is what we must reject and defeat.
Posted on July 2 at 9:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)
In Troy, New York,... the 29th richest man in the world is being given more than 300,000 taxpayer dollars to open a restaurant.
Meet George Soros. He owns Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Specifically, his company – Soros Strategic Partners – owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
.But Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has come calling. And it has found just the building it wants.
The building has almost $220,000 in back taxes owed on it.
Now, typically, if you buy a property with any liens against, you pay those.
...Unless you’re Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
In this instance, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has pressured the local industrial development agency into paying the back taxes on the building it wants to buy. That’s $218,000.
Further, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is getting a five-year deferment on the property tax that improvements on its property would have otherwise obligated it to. That five-year lag will continue for 20 years.
Meaning that Dinosaur Bar-B-Que will spend the next two decades paying less than its fair share of property taxes – while the locally owned businesses against which it competes will have to pay their full obligation.
But wait, there’s more.
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is also being given exemption from $60,000 in sales tax for materials used to improve its building, and the $53,000 fee for recording its mortgage is being waived.
Let’s do the math on that. Without even considering the five-year property-tax lag, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is being given $330,000 to come to Troy.
To open a restaurant.
Which will employ cooks and waitresses.
And compete against locally owned mom-and-pop restaurants, all of which are required to pay their taxes and which have received not a dime of taxpayer money.
And let’s not forget that the guy who owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has a personal fortune of some $11 billion. This guy is the 29th-richest person in the world.
This is an illustration of just how bad things can get, of how the insanity of “economic development” can waste money and strain credibility.
...Because private enterprise should be private enterprise. If you want to expand your business, you should pay for it. No business should be subsidized, it should be sink or swim – that is the free market, that is capitalism.
And that is what we must defend.
And insanity like this Dinosaur Bar-B-Que deal is what we must reject and defeat.
Source: Bob Lonsberry
On Dinosaur Barbecue may come to region