Or how can we change it from being a mandatory thing to a volunteer thing. I hate paying the fee’s. If you don’t pay, they take you to collections. They don’t do anything. I don’t need some stupid beaurocracy holding my hand. This entity infuriates me to no end. It is white collar extortion. Forcing me and all the other business’s to pay is border line criminal. We need to act now before this ridiculous entity becomes larger and more menacing.

The first step is to start rocking the boat now by registering to vote, thereby creating an “unknown” voting block that worries career politicos

That ALONE can be a catalyst for change.

You left out some of the best stuff! And I fully agree with you that it’s long since time for them to go away!! The CCDC should do this community a vast service and voluntarily dissolve. However, as President Reagan suggested, the closest thing to eternal life on this earth is a Government Program.

Check out the record. When they (formerly the BRA now CCDC) came imploring the Idaho Legislature to grant them tax increment financing legislation, the legislature was skeptical and conditioned the tax increment financing scheme on the following pledges:

1. They would NEVER expand beyond the 9 nine blocks of the original tax increment area.
2. They would NEVER bond in excess of $12,500,000.
3. They would voluntarily dissolve and turn the assets over to the City of Boise before 2000.

So much for the so-called promises of a government agency.

When the CCDC first proposed another tax increment area I went to the public meeting required by law and reminded them of the commitments they had made in order to get the legislation passed. They completely ignored my concerns and comments.

I next went to the Boise City Council hearing required by law to enact the ordinance establishing the new tax increment area and reminded the Boise Mayor (Brent Coles) and Council of the commitments that had been made in order to get the tax increment legislation passed. At that meeting the former Chairmen of the Ada County Highway district also testified that it was his understanding that the tax increment area was NOT to be expanded. Again, the city ignored both of us.

It is simply time for them to slip off into the sunset. Hopefully, the CCDC issue will be a major component in the upcoming Boise elections.

I tried to find some way to fight it, and was told it couldn’t be done. Because we didn’t live in the city, we had no say in the decision, even though it was our property that was being decided on.

I told the mayor that their action reminded me a lot of the way Russia simply informed other countries: “You are now part of the Union of Socialist Republics, no longer an independent nation.”

He didn’t seem to like that comment much, but didn’t really have any response.

So, all we got for the loss of our “freedom” was higher property taxes. Because, although people living in the county don’t have to pay city property tax, people living in the city still have to pay county property tax — along with the city taxes. (Isn’t there something wrong with that?)

Also, although you laugh at the concept of people living outside the city being able to vote in city elections, how would that be any different from the Boise City Councilors voting to annex my neighbors against their will, which they have done?! Seems like both concepts are equally logically (and legally) flawed, to me.

Wonk: If you consider a bunch of shoe boxes, some of them standing on end, to be a “nice-looking skyline,” then I guess it is.
Downtown wasn’t a bad place to be until the BRA tore down everything it could, in hopes somebody would come in and build something. We had a good supply of dirt “parking lots” for a long time, and, yes, CCDC had a hand in changing that — along with adding The Hole to downtown. But it seems likely that much of the useful development would have arrived on its own as the population continued to grow.

But whatever the past, there’s no apparent reason for the thing to continue to exist, expand, and deprive the rest of our big, fat, flabby government of taxes.