Here are the details of the multi-million dollar tax breaks Mayor Jorge Elorza and the Providence City Council are in the process of granting to corporate owners of existing properties even as the City Council weighs plans to increase taxes on Providence homeowners.
On December 1 of last year the City Council Committee on Finance considered four ordinances that would extend the existing tax stabilization agreements for Monohassett Mill LLC, Pearl Street Properties LLC and Pearl Street LLC, 60 Valley Street LLC and 166 Valley Street LLC on behalf of the Rising Sun Mills Project, and 100 Fountain Street.
STEP (Stop Tax Evasion in Providence) estimates the total cost of these deals to be in excess of $3 million. Mayor Elorza has expressed his support through Brett Smiley, his Chief Operating Officer, who spoke before the committee in support of these extended tax breaks here, here, here and here.
As STEP points out in their petition to garner public opposition to these tax breaks, “The construction jobs are long gone and these buildings have been occupied for quite some time.”
STEP will be delivering their petition to the Providence City Hall at 6:30 on Thursday evening.
Yesterday the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats (RIPDA) released footage of then candidate Elorza promising that the days of tax agreements with connected developers would be over in his administration. RIPDA maintains that the “deals pending before the city right now are even more egregious than usual. That’s because the development has already happened. There’s no question of encouraging development–the developers want their special tax deals to continue. This is just giving the city’s limited tax dollars to big developers. Pure and simple.”
Clearly, Mayor Elorza has a lot of explaining to do to Providence taxpayers in order to justify their housing tax increases in light of his generosity to connected insiders.
