That little sweetheart deal giving Atlantic Yards Developer "Bad Guy" Ratner even more of our tax-payers money to build his Ratnerville still needs to pass across Governor Spitzer's desk. Surprisingly, Bloomberg was not too pleased about the present form of the 421a Reform and would like to make a few changes. The most important one would be to withdraw the additional $300 million dollar tax incentive for Ratner. Read below:
Mayor Seeks to Reform 421a Reform
New York Observer by Matthew Schuerman
Published: July 12, 2007
The Bloomberg Administration has another favor to ask of the state
Legislature, along with passing congestion pricing: change a law you
just passed on the 421a property tax abatement.
The Mayor was none too pleased with the Legislature' s revision of the
program and even asked Governor Spitzer to veto it. But it turns out Mr.
Spitzer might not have to, because the bill, passed in different
versions by the Senate and the Assembly, has not even made it to the
Governor's desk.
"The position is still that we are negotiating to try to get a better
bill before it goes to the Governor's desk," said Neill Coleman,
spokesman for the city Department of Housing Preservation and
Development. "Then we are looking for a veto. Right now there isn't a
bill before the Governor to veto."
Mr. Coleman said that housing officials were talking with legislators,
including Vito Lopez, the chairman of the Assembly's housing committee.
If the Assembly returns along with the Senate on Monday to vote on
congestion pricing, an amendment could be introduced Friday night to
give it enough time to mature to be eligible for a vote the following
week.
The city wants the Legislature to make three changes: extend the
abatement to government-supported middle-income housing, such as that
planned for Queens West; shrink the so-called exclusion zone; and
retract the $300 million additional tax break that Atlantic Yards, alone
among new developments in Brownstone Brooklyn, would qualify for.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, two Brooklyn legislators who represent the
Atlantic Yards footprint asked the complex's developer, Forest City
Ratner, to commit to building more low-income condominium units on the
22-acre site, a means to comply with the spirit of the Assembly's bill
even though, technically, it does not really have to.
Assemblywoman Joan Millman, who represents a district directly to the
west of Atlantic Yards, said she would have signed the letter also but
had been on vacation. "This is a developer who has gotten many, many tax
benefits from the city and state," she told The Observer. "This is just
another piece."
However, another area Assemblyman, James Brennan, who has been one of
the more vocal critics of the project, said last week that he did not
object to the paragraph that gave Atlantic Yards special treatment.
That's because current law would have automatically given tax abatements
to all of the Atlantic Yards buildings; it is just that current law that
expires at the end of December. The state legislation renews the program
and, in the process, makes all new apartment buildings in Prospect
Heights, along with much of the rest of the city, ineligible for the
421a abatement unless they include low-income housing on the premises.
"It's not a carve-out," Mr. Brennan told The Observer last week. "The
only thing that happened was that Atlantic Yards got grandfathered in."
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