Developer walks after Port Byron board doesn't buckle

Developers of a proposed subdivision in Port Byron walked out of a village board meeting after the board voted to table agreement on a TIF or tax increment financing district until after newly elected board members are seated.

The village had already agreed on tax kick-backs to the developer for many items including marketing and lot-closing costs, but had not agreed on how much tax payers should fork over to the developers for land aquisition.

This is appalling. Businessmen, who always extoll the virtues of the market and how hard they work to compete, walking out indignant after the taxpayers of an area won't give them even more subsidies and protections from any losses on the deal.
How in the world is it assumed that taxpayers should foot the bill for marketing a private development and coughing up money for closing costs of buyers and sellers?

In these situations, it's assumed that the value to the community would come from increased tax revenues from development, but under TIF districts, any increase in tax revenues would have been handed back to the developers to subsidize a huge part of their costs. How is this considered advantageous to anyone other than these developers and their investors?

Is it to be assumed that the economy is so horrible that without huge amounts of welfare to businesses, there simply would be NO development whatsoever? It's hard to imagine that is the case, and if it is, then the economy is really in worse shape than people realize. Either way it stinks.

Even though the Port Byron board had a perfectly legitimate reason for postponing approval, it's refreshing, and unusual, to see business interests bailing on a project because they couldn't extort as much as they'd hoped from local government.

Perhaps this was a gambit to try to force the issue. One hopes that Port Byron sticks to it's guns. If this group couldn't make it without such heavy subsidies, and couldn't wait a matter of weeks for a decision, then one wonders if you'd want them around anyway. Apparently they plan to move on to find some other suckers.