After nearly two hours of public comment, the Jersey City council approved a tax exempt financial agreement with JP Morgan Chase Bank and a 20-year tax abatement for a hotel to be built at 1 Exchange Place.
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfwzNyFOABs&feature=youtu.be[/fve]
Thank you, John very much for covering this crucial topic of tax abatements. The Jersey City Council apparently has a very short memory of when Jersey City was sued by three other county municipalities because the lack of county taxes that Jersey City abated properties were paying as PILOTS was forcing other municipalities higher couty tax rates.The result of that suit was the inclusion that 5% of the PILOTs go to the county. This percentage still short changes the county, as Matthew Boxer, the former NJ Comptroller said in his masterful 27 page seminal paper “A Programmatic Examination of Municipal Tax Abatements.” While I am pro-union, it seems to me that the union official and worker don’t grasp that, due to the tax abatement, the full rate property tax payers and their tennants, indirectly, are paying for it. As they are therefore indirectly subsidizing the union workers’ salary, would the union give some of it back to the taxpayers? (actually, I am somewhat ashaimed to even propose that. I know folks are still struggling. To bad the wealthy recipients of this tax abatement use you as props when it serves their interest. No doubt if they could get away with non union labor, they would.)