Special Board of Aldermen 03-15-2021 Page 16
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you. | have to echo what Alderman Jette said. | think that this has been a good discussion. | think
there’s a lot of questions that people on this Board have including some basic knowledge of where that
project has gone, even since the last non-Aldermanic conversation. | don’t know how | can say | support a
TIF when | don’t know what the plan is.
President Wilshire
Anyone else? Alderman Clemons?
Alderman Clemons
Yeah | concur with Alderwoman Kelly and Alderman Jette. This could be the plan forward but again, in
order to sell me at least, speaking for myself, | need to see a real solid plan that lays everything out all the
way into hundred years from now. And without that | can’t in good conscious, even though yeah it may be
better temporarily, | can’t in good conscious support something that | don’t have all the answers to. So yes,
| guess, a TIF — yeah it might be a good solution. But again, the devil is in the details and in this particular
project, details really matter. | am never one to shy away from jumping onboard with a development plan or
a really good idea but when it comes to stuff like this, it is people’s health and we have to be very careful.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
| have a question through the Chair to Attorney Bolton.
President Wilshire
Sure.
Alderman Lopez
If we do approve a TIF or move forward in that direction, would we be able to contract stipulations for future
years including like the business holder would be willing to — do they even have to agree to the TIF first of
all? What is the point where we would want to insert a requirement for a property manager to contribute
something towards public health or some entity being able to evaluate this that the City has control over.
Or, alternatively, if it was the TIF and we were going to reserve taxpayer money in the future towards
environmental monitoring, what would that look like and how would you recommend it?
Steve Bolton, Corporation Counsel
Well right now, you are not approving any deal. You are not approving any TIF, you are not approving
anything tonight and frankly you are not approving anything or being asked to approve anything very soon.
This deal is not done. There is going to be a lot of tinkering, a lot of negotiations, before anything is
reduced to writing. So yes, can you require other things before you approve any deal? Yes, you can
require that the developer stand on his head in the middle of the parkway every April Fool’s Day. Itisa
completely open book at this point as far as what you can require.
Now your future monitoring, | fully expect, none of these deals happen without that being a requirement.
Now whether it goes on for 100 years, that | can’t say. But there will be monitoring out for a long period of
time in the future. It is not going to be done by the developer's custodian. It’s not going to be done by any
