Man, it's like talking to a brick wall.
I'm sure the feeling is mutual, but that's not the issue here.
I'll try to make this simple.
Moving businesses from old offices to new offices does NOT GROW YOUR TAX
BASE. Get it?
Yes. But it's not JUST old into new, no net gain. Downtown's office capacity and long-term value are clearly up. So it's a long-term NET GAIN. The old buildings lose value, but the long-term value of the new far outweighs that.
There's nothing in isolating a few losers to give you the overall picture.
New buildings with higher taxes doesn't help if existing buildings' taxes
are dropping like rocks. Get it?
Yes. But if the tax gains from the new buildings outweigh the drops, then you GAIN. And since we're having this discussion at the bottom of a market cycle, things look just fine long-term.
Under-assessing ANY buildings HURTS all taxpayers and starves the budget.
Get it?
Yes, but you've never really addressed how businesses should be assessed. NO ONE assesses based on selling price - until a building is sold. There are also rules for making assessments (which is why business owners go to court all the time).
You've shown zip, nada that the rules aren't being followed. The concept that selling price = previous assessed value just is just wrong; no one works that way.
You need MORE businesses and MORE people and accurate tax assessments. Get
it?
Yup, and only pointing out the isolated explainable drops doesn't speak to MORE or LESS overall. You need to look at the pluses AND minuses — which is my point.
You can't look at $315 million of new value and $13 million of new property taxes and complain about a building that lost a few million in value (at the bottom of a market trough).
Let's look at the totality and the long-term and then we can make a rational judgment. Until then, emotion, frustration and hectoring will betray our logic.
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