Any improvements made within the urban renewal district are taxed, however these taxes go directly to the enlargement of the CCDC bureaucratic fifedom. Ity is enraging.

The People and city government are providing basic police, fire and other emergency services while this ” created bureaucracy” ( by city officials we elected to represent us ) gets fatter at the expense of the people. It’s time for ” team Dave” to tighten their financial waist line and do the job the people elected them for-not CCDC! Kudos to the Idaho Business Review and the Guardian for bringing this to the attention of the people of Boise.

AMEN!

As for the Wonk’s response to that: Well, boisecvnic brings up the point I was thinking about when I read it: There are laws about how bad you can let things get (I got nailed once for letting “weeds” (I call them tall grasses) grow on my property.

Yeah, we could have a civic pride march to push clean-up; then, in fairness, we could have one for folks who like junk cars, weeds, etc.

Or, we could just turn the whole damned valley over to developers (as our councils commishes etc. seem to want to), give them tax breaks and other incentives, turn what taxes they do pay over to the specialized agencies instead of the city, county or state, and — Wow! Hey! It might work — maybe there wouldn’t be enough in the city, county and state coffers to pay salaries of the councilors, commishes, legislatorororors etc., and they’d all go away!

Hmmmm

Wonk, I think you may be missing something, though. Many people in this town are right at home with junk cars and weeds and peeling paint etc. etc. There’s no accounting for taste and it’s a tall order to legislate “class.”

We have hispanic pride marches and gay pride marches and women’s pride marches, when did anyone ever here of a civic pride march? Perhaps it’s time for one, if we’re lucky, 5 or 6 people might show up.

Again I ask, what is your plan for improving the hundreds of acres of blighted strip malls in Boise? Do you have anything postive to add here? Unless your personal effluent vanishes into the ether and unless you reside in a remote mountain cave and live off the land, you are part of the problem and solution to living an a city. What are your bright ideas?

The only property tax revenues you’re getting ‘screwed” out of are those lost from the blighted neighborhoods you don’t appear to have any concern about.

You describe the development of the month style for strip malls as if it were a “planned community,” like Harris Ranch or that Hammer Flats scam. We all know it is nothing but a subdivision that will be dumping “treated effluent” into the river upstream from where Boise gets drinking water.

Your “low income housing” is yet another scam with tax “credits” being sold on the market–it is bad enough we citizens get screwed out of property tax revenues. Stop your deceptive prattling please!

As for the strip malls, you people “sell” a plan to the council after arranging PAC and other payoffs to their campaigns. Please don’t bait me with your transparent schemes.

I presume you live in a neighborhood, designed by a developer, approved by a city, built by construction workers, sold by Realtors and inhabited by people earning an honest living. This is what you call the “government developer cartel” and you live in it.

It’s also called “society.” You don’t have to be “well-connected” to care about it and want to improve it.

You have just made my point. Eisenhower warned of the “Military-Industrial Complex.” Of equal danger is the “local government-developer cartel.” Check out the payments the developers, realtors, builders, make to candidates compared to what neighborhood associations can afford to pay for favors. You obviously are well connected. I am just a citizen and think people like you are a threat to our community.