Transcript:
This is Midshore Midday. I’m Jim Brady.
Last Wednesday, the entire Cambridge City Council and many candidates for upcoming city elections gathered at the packing house for an invitation only meeting that was not announced to the public or disclosed to the press.
Officials of the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, ESLC, organized a meeting and presented it as an informational seminar about tax increment financing, or TIFs, to fund community development.
What they didn’t tell the audience is that the two presenters were from consulting firms contracted by Cambridge Waterfront Development Incorporated.
For more than a year CWDI has been advocating for a $30 million TIFF to provide $22 million for Cambridge Harbor.
Carol Bean, ESLC’s land use and policy manager who organized the meeting, said it was intended to be a “small kind of educational event for the leaders. The initial idea was really sort of for the candidates and then I think with several significant new hires with the planning, finance and city manager. So that seemed an opportunity for them.”
Bean said she did discuss the meeting with contacts at CWDI, but she said it was not intentional that the two consultants included in the presentation – The Miles & Stockbridge law firm and MuniCap advisors – were under contract with CWDI .
“I don’t think – that’s certainly wasn’t what we were looking for. I think it’s a rather specialized field, so they’re not, I mean, we had talked to Medco and we were trying to find people not involved with the project. I think that was difficult as sort of a handful of people that have sort of expertise in this that are available to come.”
She said Municap and Miles & Stockbridge agreed to do the seminar at no charge. Some of those who attended the meeting at the packing house said they were unaware that the experts speaking to them were CWDI consultants. Nevertheless, nearly everyone who attended said the Cambridge Harbor Project and CWDI were only mentioned. The presentation they said was informative and valuable.
Cambridge Mayor Steve Rideout: “ It was terrific. It confirmed a lot of what I thought should be the way we worked together.”
And Commissioner Jameson Harrington: “Overall, it was mostly showing examples of tiffs that have worked here in Maryland explaining how they work and all that. Basically, TIF 101.”
Presenters explained how tax increment financing work. Using this popular method, many municipalities fund new developments by diverting all tax revenue increases paid by new businesses and residents in a TIF district that goes to pay interest on bonds that have been sold to private investors to raise money for the project.
CWDI representatives have appeared in public gatherings and interviews multiple times over the last year pitching a TIF plan. They say not only will it trigger development, but it will bring $10 million each to the city and Dorchester County.
CWDI has paid Municap to revise their TIF model at least seven times, as former city manager Tom Carroll reviewed them and found them unworkable. Carroll analyzed CWDI’S last TIF version and found the repayment to bond holders would require two unlikely conditions: a 100% build out with an immediate full occupancy of the project, and further, that property values would rise uninterrupted for 30 years.
In more than six years in charge of the Cambridge Harbor Development, CWDI has not procured a single private investor or signed any businesses or residential building contracts. Even with no commitments for commercial projects on the horizon, CWDI has urged city officials to create a TIF district immediately that would net CWDI $22 million now to be spent on infrastructure.
With that in place, CWDI members said, they will be able to attract investors, builders, and businesses that have eluded them so far.
Mayor Rideout said he felt city leaders were vindicated hearing what the experts had to say about TIF policies.
“The whole focus was not on CWDI, but on how tiffs work. Quite frankly, they reinforced in my mind from what they said that Tom Carroll was right. We were right, on how we felt that the process should work. So they were not advocating that CWDI handled the whole process in the right way.”
ESLC made a video of last Wednesday’s presentation available on YouTube, but the meeting itself was not a public event.
Ward one commissioner Laurel Atkiss said, council members took care not to enter into any deliberations or even sit by one another. And Rideout said the council was largely unaware they all would be there, since Eastern Shore Land Conservancy sent out individual invitations.
“What I got was an invitation. I didn’t know who else was invited. It wasn’t our meeting. It wasn’t a government meeting, it was a training. There wasn’t any decisions made or motions or discussion amongst the commissioners about what to do about this information. And again, the information was, I would say 90, 95% about just TIFs in general and not CWDI.”
Maryland law requires all state and local government bodies to notify the public in advance of any meeting when a majority of that body is present. Open meetings law also forbids government officials to enter a meeting closed to the public unless specific exceptions are invoked and a vote to close the meeting is taken.
