LETTER TO THE EDITOR
While l02 IDA’s are protesting their tax bills from the State of New York ( Westchester County Business Journal, 4/12/10), the residents of New Rochelle are aware that local IDA benefits given to developers have not been financially rewarding to the City. A recent audit by the State Comptroller’s office reinforces this problem.
In an audit of the New Rochelle IDA the New York State Comptroller’s office found that between 2007-08 a review of l0 projects found the IDA "did not perform an analysis to see if the benefit would exceed the cost of providing tax abatements and exceptions although they did say some projects had provided enough information to evaluate them. They found no monitoring of projects to see if they were meeting their goals. For example, the New Roc Parcel 1-A was supposed to create 358 jobs but had only created 98 jobs by the end of 2008.
These examples are a sampling of the broken promises that an IDA can create. Other new businesses in the City such as a Shoprite were opened with no financial incentives and no IDA benefits.
The taxpayers of New Rochelle would like to know why there is such a limited amount of supervision and monitoring of the IDA in their City. Why aren’t the residents allowed to have input into IDA decisions? At least one of our Council members wants accountability built into the process, e.g. having developers make up the sales tax if they overestimate this amount in their proposals.
Until there are safeguards built in for the community, IDAs will continue to be viewed very cautiously by taxpayers.
Sincerely,
Peggy Godfrey