thank you for doing this! its great to have a newer/fresher perspective on this critical issue. we know where we came from, now where are we going?


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JSleeze, your name says everything about you. I can only guess, you are associated with development or with politicians and don't want to gravy to stop running.

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Since she didn't talk about the origin of abatements in Jersey City, how the hell do you think you know whether or not Brigid knows how they started? More important - why do you feel it's necessary to spew the Britt shundlah, jirry mccayan history lesson that you just can't stop yourself from delivering. Give it a rest - you have become a caricature of yourself. Whether or not Newport needed/received/asked for an abatement 30+ years ago has little to nothing to do with anything.

Why don't you listen to someone for a change rather than flapping your gums endlessly at the drop of every hat, telling the same old history lessons that are typically of little relation to the topic at hand. You might learn something.

Here is the problem...
Tax abatements are regulated by the State of New Jersey with the purpose of restoring ?blighted? areas?2. The foundational premise of an abatement is this: if a property is ?blighted? then extra incentive is needed to coax a private developer to build upon or upgrade the property. In essence, blight equates to risk; what if the developer invests hundreds of millions of dollars yet owners or renters are still unwilling to move in? The tax abatement is meant to counter this risk. With an abatement, a significant cost that the government can control ? taxes ? is lowered, thus enabling the developer to attract a greater supply of owners or renters.

Jersey seems to be doing it wrong, there is nothing "blighted" about most of the spots that got abatement's in the last five years dtjc.

Brigid, you have no idea how abatements started. The city did not require abatements for development, but asked for them to fulfilled campaign promises. Newport never asked for an abatement originally, they were happy to have a $40 million UDAG grant. But former Mayor Cucci offered them an abatement for affordable housing, so after the first 4 towers were built, Newport put ads in the NY Post advertising apartments, the 271 affordable units basically went to NYC residents. Colgate never asked for an abatement. They said in the early 1980s their property was too valuable so they closed the plant and started development. But the state of NJ told Mayor Cucci to add $20 million to the board of ed, the former mayor, McCann short changed the school system, so Cucci asked the Colgate Redevelopment to prepay their taxes and Colgate Redevelopment asked for an abatement. Then it became common. There are projects in the 1980s, the beginning that did not have long term abatements, one is Dixon Mills and the other is Society Hills. Politics caused abatement, not development. Here is a better pdf on abatements.
http://www.njpp.org/reports/all-that- ... abatements-in-jersey-city

I'm writing a series of articles about abatements, and wanted to share the link for post #1 ("the basics about abatements"), here: http://civicparent.org/2014/01/30/tax ... nts-101-a-basic-overview/

My plan is to write a series of articles that build up to a concrete analysis of abatements in Jersey City specifically, and also look at how public schools intersect with abatement funding in Jersey City.