This Thursday (7/26) at 10:00 am the LA State Bond Commission will meet in Senate Room A in the State Capitol Building. Their agenda will include two items that may allow the sale of bonds to finance the infrastructure for the Nord Du Lac shopping center at the intersection of I-12 and Highway 21 near Covington. TIF bonds are Tax Increment Financing bonds. They use sales or property tax to retire bonds used to finance economic development projects in blighted or otherwise depressed or underdeveloped areas. If successful, the developer will be able to finance his infrastructure with state sales tax dollars. The state will be kicking in ¾ of a cent of its sales tax. That means that money will come directly out of the state's general fund to pay for infrastructure for a private developer in an area that is hardly economically depressed or blighted. This is called greenfield development. Rather than the developer paying for his own infrastructure, you and I are paying for it from state revenues. Remember, this is the project that was rezoned from single family residential to highway commercial in the faces of hundreds of residents who opposed the rezoning, when the New Directions 2025 Comprehensive Plan called for this area to be mixed use (low impact commercial and residential). Of the 57 proposed stores in this center 20 are already located within a five mile radius, namely Mandeville and Covington. That means that vital sales tax revenue will leave the cities of Mandeville and Covington because the developer is able to make sweetheart deals to attract tenants based on his infrastructure savings. Another 22 stores are located in Slidell or Metairie. "Incremental" tax is tax revenue that was not present before a TIF project was built. This is not incremental revenue. It is simply "relocated" revenue. Mayor Price from Mandeville and I, along with council members and other concerned citizens - and I hope members of our legislative delegation - will be attending the bond commission meeting next Thursday to oppose the approval of these bonds. I am told that the more people present, the greater weight our argument may have. If you are interested in this very important matter of public policy and taxation, please attend the upcoming Bond Commission meeting on Thursday, August 26 at 10:00 am in the state capitol building (Senate Room A).