Silivis votes down taxpayer hand out to Triumph
While the story on QC Online described the Silvis city council as divided prior to tonight's meeting, the final result as reported on KWQC was 7 to 1 against agreeing to give Triumph millions in tax breaks.
The vote came after a packed meeting in Silvis where both proponents and opponents of the plan were allowed to state their cases.
Update: The QC Times now has a story up.
A crowd of residents broke into cheers and shouts — and even some tears — tonight as the Silvis City Council voted no to expanding the enterprise zone for the proposed Triumph Foods pork-processing plant site in neighboring East Moline.
The council voted 7-1 against the enterprise zone designation, with Alderman Gene Leibovitz casting the lone “yes” vote.
You can read the piece here and congratulate those who stood against this expansion of benefits to Triumph.
In order to extend a "enterprise zone" which carries with it tax breaks and many other special benefites to Triumph, it had to be agreed to by the towns of Moline, East Moline, Milan, Silvis, and Rock Island County. All the others besides Silvis had previously agreed to expanding the corporate welfare zone.
This of course doesn't mean the project won't go forward, and the fight continues to try to make Triumph compete on a level playing field without massive tax payer subsidies.
posted by The Inside Dope @ 4/04/2006
5 comments
5 Comments:
Triumph compete on a level playing field without massive tax payer subsidies. More subsidies will be given not less.
The story on QCOnline was from Tuesday morning's paper. That story was based on interviews done Monday. You seem to be suggesting that QCOnline was "wrong" in its reporting. That's not the case. Jenny Lee reported what she was told. Either the aldermen lied to her, or they changed their minds during the course of the day Tuesday.
Please be more careful in your word choices.
Your assumption is completely mistaken.
Please READ the post before you jump to conclusions and read things into it that aren't there.
I'm amazed at how often people seem to misread and skim a post and then rush to assert I've made a mistake or am saying things I didn't.
Before making assumptions, perhaps you might re-read the post.
I wrote:
"While the story on QC Online described the Silvis city council as divided prior to tonight's meeting, the final results as reported on KWQC was 7 to 1 against agreeing to give Triumph millions in tax breaks."
Where do I suggest that QC Online was "wrong"??!!
I was fully aware that the article was written before the meeting was held. That's why I wrote that it reported that the council was divided PRIOR to the meeting.
Please try to be more careful next time before leaping to assumptions.
My prediction: The City of East Moline will still waive building permit fees for the project. The State of Illinois will designate the project a "High Impact Business" giving it all the same incentives as the Enterprise Zone except one. The only incentive Triumph will not get is the sales tax deduction on building materials. In Illinois, all the equipment used in the manufacturing process is already exempt from sales tax. My guess is the cost of equipment going into the plant far outweighs the cost of construction materials. The biggest drawback for East Moline in this vote is that they didn't get an extra one hundred acres plus surrounding the plant into the Enterprise Zone.
I fail to see why community leaders would welcome a mega-corporate box store which accounts for a huge portion of our trade deficit with China, pays their employees as sub-living wage, foces many of them to depend on your tax dollars for their medical care and other support, drives small businesses and some large businesses with roots in the community out of business, and demands bribes to do all this into their community.
I think, or sincerely hope, that we'll have some significant resisitance to this unfair monopoly taking over that area.
Really, do we want to end up with ONE enormous corporation being the only retail outlet in the United States? Or the world for that matter?
I suggest you investigate more on what the Wal-Mart corporation is like.
The five Walton family members are worth over 18 BILLION dollars a piece, yet contributed $6000 to their employee relief fund, as opposed to poorly paid Wal-Mart employees who donated over $5 million.
The Waltons have donated something like 2% of their vast wealth to charitable causes compared to Bill Gates who's donated over 50%.
These people and their monolithic corporation aren't something to be embraced and sucked up to.
The are routinely a negative force and have a negative affect on both the communities they locate in as well as the workers they exploit and the taxpayers who are forced to pay their benefits for them.
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