This is the second in our series of posts about TIFs. A TIF – if you remember from our piece entitled “To TIF or Not To TIF?” which became an instant classic – stands for Tax Increment Financing.
This is the second in our series of posts about TIFs. A TIF – if you remember from our piece entitled “To TIF or Not To TIF?” which became an instant classic – stands for Tax Increment Financing.
It is the mission of Baltimore Rising to start a fire. We talk about it all the time. Not the destructive kind. No. Of course not. What we’re talking about is igniting all-inclusive economic growth that will, sooner rather than later, clean up the mess that Baltimore has become over the past 60 years. Those are the 60 years during which the manufacturing sector of the city collapsed and, for one reason or another, one third of our population, mostly from the top down, disappeared. A good many of them abandoned the city for the safer, more prosperous, better educated suburbs.

Screenshot from the Baltimore Development Corporation website. Note the BDC’s slogan. Catchy, but what exactly does it mean?
Let’s talk briefly about TIFs. “To TIF or not to TIF?” isn’t really the question, but it makes for a catchy title. The real question isn’t whether or not, but where.
“Excuse me.”
Yes?
“What’s a TIF?”
Reason #7 had to do with the first of Steve Schuh’s 5 point plan to save Anne Arundel County by lowering property tax rates by 3%. Somehow, Steve believes that saving people $27.30 per year per $100,000 of assessed value will lure all manner of new employers to the county.