Instead of the usual “Expenditures of Distinction” categories this month, we will focus on recent TIF spending. The City of DeKalb spent another $4700 out of the TIF Fund (.pdf p.52) on the Van Buer parking lot, this time for something called “FIBRCONE,” which brings the past two months’ parking lot embellishments to over $15,000 that I know of. There are two possibilities here. One is that the finishing touches on the parking lot were rolled into this year’s streetscape project. The other is simply that each little job happens to come in under the $20,000 threshold at which Council needs to approve the expenditure.
Either way, we’ve been deprived of our say in the matter.
The biggest bird flipped catapulted at the people, however, is the monument they are building on the sidewalk at Eduardo’s. You can really tell who ReNew’s favored business people are; Hillside gets a bit more sidewalk while Eduardo’s gets brick walls and what looks to be a large concrete fountain.
Every dollar going to reward ReNew’s most avid supporters of downtown “pay to play” is a dollar that cannot be spent on the police station expansion.
