The Old "Pass It On" Game Stops

Here is my two-minute interpretation of the TIF report given to the Fairfield City Council and the taxing bodies on Tuesday.

In a nutshell, it’s a mess.

The city council has misappropriated, mis-spent, and generally mucked up two different Tax Increment Financing funds going back over four administrations.

The mess has caused the withholding of hundreds of thousands of dollars to our local schools and taxing districts. The districts agreed to an extension of TIF, in exchange for a 40-percent cut from the city. They got jobbed.

Attorney Dan Schuering said the suggestion that TIF funds in Fairfield were a slush fund for city fathers…..is accurate. For the most part, past administrations did what they wanted to…..without any accountability.

The most egregious error was the illegal transfer of over a million dollars from one TIF account to the other. That will require state legislative action to fix.  The million dollar problem was used to build infrastructure in a subdivision owned by a private developer. That subdivision, Farrington Farms, has one house. The city only gets $9,000 a year back in taxes for their million. It’s a boondoggle.

And there’s more….Schuering said he is baffled why TIF money has never been used to find another employer for the Airtex property. He asked----Would you pay a million TIF dollars for an employer who could bring in 50 good paying jobs? Heck yes, is my answer.

I’ve been railing on the need for jobs since last July. And the outside attorney who is trying to fix this TIF fiasco is asking the same question.

 An unbelievable mess.