Although I am not a City taxpayer, I have business interests in the City of Richmond which are indirectly affected by the merchants' real-estate tax load. So, I am interested in what is happening therein.
Your June 30 article about the contretemps over the present and future real-estate tax burden for Stone Brewing Co. raises issues that tend to support Donald Trump's complaint about inferior government negotiation of trade deals: that "our" negotiators cannot manage to address seemingly simple concerns adroitly.
The essence of the City dispute is the implicit taxable value of the real estate occupied by Stone Brewing and the resultant assessed-tax burden. That multi-million-dollar brewery and restaurant were built via $23 Million in revenue bonds, guaranteed by and to be redeemed at taxpayer expense. Stone Brewing gets to buy the property at the end of its 25-year lease for a "nominal" $25,000.00, so it understandably wants to be taxed only on the $25,000.00 valuation. This could cost City taxpayers as much as $9.1 Million over the life of the lease. They have been left on the hook for any deficiency by the City's Economic Development Authority, according to your article. Those "wizards" who negotiated that nonsense are reduced to quibbling over the meaning of "nominal." Apparently, Stone Brewing pays no rents for the property other than properly-assessed taxes. This utterly avoidable issue defies common sense. It demonstrates the folly of having communities compete with each other for "economic development" at taxpayer expense.
Why could not that obvious issue have been simply and effectively addressed in plain language at the outset? What idiot wrote up that lease? Someone or some entity needs to be held fully accountable to all City taxpayers.
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