Special Board of Aldermen 03-15-2021 Page 15
wouldn’t even use a TIF for the environmental remediation. Now all deals change as time goes on and |
can tell you right now the thought process would be that some of those TIF dollars would go to the
environmental remediation. So if anyone has a concern about that, | would like to know that, because it’s
going to be important for us to be able to structure this deal to make forward.
Alderman O’Brien
Madam President, just an additional comment. If you are looking for support on the TIF, at this particular
time as presented to me, | will support a TIF. Thank you.
Mayor Donchess
The biggest demand we have in terms of bonding right now is, of course, the Middle School Project which
is $110 million plus is very significant. So | think that has to be our priority.
President Wilshire
Alderman Jette?
Alderman Jette
Thank you, Madam President. There have been a lot of good points made by my fellow Aldermen. Director
Cummings, on the one hand you tell us that there are a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of answers
that you have asked for that you haven’t received yet. On the other hand, you are asking for some kind of
sense of the Board as to what we would be in favor of. | think Alderman Tencza said it and that is that right
now there are just too many unanswered questions for us to give, at least for me, to give you any kind of
sense as to what | would be in favor of, you know, a TIF or anything else. | think we need more information.
| think the questions have to be answered, | think the questions you’ve asked have to be answered.
| know that some of the Aldermen have expressed concern about this property, the people who are
responsible for contaminating the property are not the ones being asked to pay for it. | am not sure what the
status of Chester Realty is; | think they went into bankruptcy but | am not sure. Is the Purchase & Sale
Agreement that the developer has, is it with Chester Realty, are they going to be getting any money out of
this? | think those are legitimate questions. The other thing is we have got a bad situation and it is not
going to get any better just by letting it sit there. | think remediation has to occur and what we have to
figure out is how do we best accomplish that? | think the EPA has told us that removing the contaminants
from the property which | think some of the neighbors would like is not something that they are going to
support because of the expense and the fact that when we move it from here it is going to go somewhere
else, as you pointed out.
| think the EPA’s seemed to have as many safeguards as is possible, nothing is 100% guaranteed. | am
concerned as the Mayor pointed out, the neighbors are uphill from this site if it migrates, it is going to
migrate down to the river, into the river. And then where is it going to go from there, downriver. So this
could be a very disastrous turn of events unless we do something about it. It sounds like we’ve got an
opportunity to do something about it. And | think working with this developer seems to be a reasonable
solution, but | want to make it clear to you that | am not ready to support anything until we have all the
information we need to make the best decision that we can. So thank you.
President Wilshire
Alderwoman Kelly?
