We need TIF transparency

The City of Saint Paul in 2024 has over $34 million of taxable valuation captured in TIF districts — the largest amount of any city in Minnesota. St. Paul’s tax levy for TIF districts is even larger at over $44 million. These are huge numbers and have a direct bearing on the financial health of the city.

Although a potentially useful tool facilitating development that is taxable — and we do need taxable development in the city — it is a complex and difficult-to-understand tool that can have a significant impact on taxes paid by St. Paul citizens. Greater transparency in its objectives and use is required.

I have two concerns with the lack of transparency in the way TIF is used in St. Paul.

1. Lack of transparent criteria for making TIF decisions

The original use of TIF, which stands for tax-increment financing, was focused on facilitating development of blighted real estate. Some current TIF districts in St. Paul do not appear to meet the definition of being blighted. The conversion of Landmark Towers from commercial to residential is one such example. A recent consultant’s report commissioned by the Saint Paul Downtown Alliance identified at least 10 commercial buildings in St. Paul that are candidates for conversion to the residential market. What criteria will the city employ in deciding whether or not to employ TIF for these potential conversions and other development opportunities?

2. Lack of transparency in data concerning each TIF district

The city of Minneapolis discloses data for each of its TIF districts on an annual basis. The city of St. Paul does not. I ask that the city of St. Paul website provide basic information about each TIF district, including the following:

— A description of the proposed development project

— The developer’s name and subsidy amount

— The original estimate of property taxes to be captured annually

— The size and term of bonds issued in connection with the district.

Yes, TIF can be a valuable tool in promoting taxable development. Greater transparency in its use, however, is needed to ensure that citizens of St. Paul are able to fully evaluate whether and to what extent it is serving the needs of the citizens in a cost-effective manner.

— Bob Muschewske, St. Paul The writer is a member of the In$ight Committee studying the financial situation in St. Paul

No fare?

I have a question for Charlie Zelle and the entire Metropolitan Council.

Why should I subsidize the fare of a rider who refuses to pay, yet who has the audacity to hold his steaming cup of Starbucks coffee under the driver’s nose?

Compounding the weight of this injustice, Metro Transit does not even allow the driver to ask the rider to pay.

Tell me. Is that “no fare” fair?

— Ann Redding, Minneapolis

This decision-making shouldn’t remain secret

A child — previously known to have been in danger — died.

It’s a familiar story, one that makes its way into the news too often. The death is usually explained with the phrase “Little So-and-So fell through the cracks” — cracks in the child protection system.

This particular child, Eli Hart, was known to have been in danger not only in the awareness of concerned relatives. He was known to have been in danger in the awareness of civil authorities, social workers, officials required by their job descriptions to watch over the community’s well-being.

The Pioneer Press reports: “A $2.25 million settlement has been approved in a wrongful-death lawsuit brought against Dakota County and three employees by the father of Eli Hart, a 6-year-old boy who was fatally shot by his mother in May 2022.”

The boy was strapped into a car booster seat and shot with a shotgun nine times by his mother.

The first social worker who reviewed the case after the boy’s father tried to gain custody understood the danger. Reuniting the boy with his mother would be unsafe, wrote Beth Dehner, adding that the “risk level” for reunion with his mother was “high.”

She was prevailed upon to change her mind. Therein lies a story that needs to be told. The community should know why a child in danger was returned to a dangerous parent —- why the first, right reaction of the social worker familiar with the boy’s situation was overruled.

We live in a country filled with dangerous parents, and it’s becoming more so, now that women are denied to an even greater extent than ever their right to control their own reproductive lives.

The “manosphere” has decided that if women won’t have enough children to keep fertility rates high by choice, then women should be forced to have children, forced by laws and interpretations of laws that they —- “manly men” and religious zealots — put in place.

Never mind if a woman is capable of competent parenting. “Your body, my choice,” is the new mantra.

Forced childbirth results in parents who don’t want to be parents. In that context, a woman who couldn’t be trusted to care for her child with love and humanity was nevertheless awarded custody by a group of four other women whose jobs require them to promote the general welfare.

These four other women included two county social workers, a court-appointed guardian ad litem and a county attorney, and their recommendations were followed and approved by a judge.

After the boy was murdered by means of nine shots of lead pumped into his little body, and after his mother was duly convicted of his murder, the boy’s father and grandparents sued Dakota County and three of the individuals whose decisions led to the child’s death.

Then, at last, county officials recognized a “risk” level high enough for them to pay close attention to danger.

But now it’s all been settled. The lawsuit will never come before a jury. The Dakota Board of County Commissioners decided in its wisdom that it would be best if a potential jury and the public at large remain uninformed about the decision-making process that resulted in a 6-year-old boy being put back into the control of a mother they knew, by their own social worker’s report, to be too dangerous to parent the child, a woman who turned out to be willing and able to pump nine shots into her child’s body.

Why did they allow it?

That’s a secret and likely to remain so. Whatever evidence might exist is shrouded in the settlement terms.

We all make mistakes, but this was a knowing mistake, and Dakota County shrewdly concluded a jury should not review how it came about. So the public will never know.

But Eli Hart is still dead. That’s on us.

The public has a right to know what happened and why.

— Jean Wulterkens, St. Paul