Minyard Food Store at Jupiter and Beltline Arapaho sits vacant and defrocked. QuikTrip is seeking to building a convenience store with gas pumps in the parking lot area and to demolish this building to make way for an office building and new car wash.

 
We know that our tax base is declining. We know that our sales tax revenues are way down. We know that our new construction is about a quarter less than half what it was just two years ago.
 
We know the Minyard Food Store at Jupiter and Beltline Arapaho has been sitting vacant for a couple years and there have been no prospects for a tenant. We know that QuikTrip agreed to buy the parcel and demolish the vacant building if the economics of the deal would work. We know they didn't need to demolish the building for their purposes; after all, they just wanted to use the front space that Minyard had used for its gas pumps. We know the Council had inflated the cost to QuikTrip by requiring a parapet wall that I personally thought unnecessary and architecturally undesirable, a thumping to the tune of $75,000.
 
So when QuikTrip asked the city to waive some impact and tipping fees at the landfill equaling about $32,000, it was what many Council members called a "no brainer." By any stretch of the imagination, QT was doing the city and the citizens a favor razing the building and significantly improving a major entrance into the city by making room for three new buildings and businesses, and giving the shopping center at that location a new shot in the arm. Those businesses should have a much easier time of it when the QT, a new office building, and a new state-of-the-art car wash attract traffic off the street.
 
However, for reasons I still don't comprehend, these facts were ignored by some Council members. Instead, they argued it was an unfair "cost" to the taxpayers. Waiving fees does not cost the taxpayers except as an opportunity cost if the project goes forward. Inversely, if the failure to waive the fees tipped the economic scales against the project and it didn't go forward, the opportunity costs would be enormous. It was the latter scenario the majority sought to prevent.
 
When first discussed, the naysayers asked that staff prepare documentation addressing whether the waivers would be offset by increased sales and property taxes. The staff did so considering only the QT—not the other two new businesses or any increase in sales or property values for the other businesses—and determined the waived amount would be offset in a matter of months. (The same as had been said the previous meeting.) Yet even provided with the information they had requested, it had no affect on their arguments.
 
Here are some of the things that I fail to grasp:

• The argument was made over and over that not granting the waivers protected the taxpayers but each of these Council members has voted for every proposed tax increase since being in office—$32,000 vs millions.
• Just a couple years ago, one Council member who opposed these waivers proposed waiving over $27,000 in street impact fees "to help" a business in his district. (The QT request was only $6800 in street impact fees.)
• After voting against the QT waivers, these same Council members voted minutes later to waive tree mitigation fees of over $39,000.

Arguments made one moment were abandoned the next.
 
I don't argue that the fees in these other two cases should not have been waived because I think there were good reasons to do so. But I can't help but note these latter two were in isolated locations that are not entrances to the city and will never provide any economic benefit to the surrounding area. In the last case, a church, there will never be any property taxes or sales taxes to offset the waiver.
 
Fortunately, when the smoke had cleared, the waivers were approved and we significantly increased our chances that new development will help revive the shopping center.
 
As I've said so many times, we have to grow the value of the city. Yes, I'll forgo $32,000 at zero risk in return for hundreds of thousands any day of the week. My concern in cases like these is that Council members can get mired in the minutia or politics and lose sight of the big picture. In the big picture we're challenged as first listed above. We can't be squandering opportunities, period. They are too few and too far between.
 
When we squander an opportunity, we really do cost the taxpayers. Almost every taxpayer can understand granting a waiver for a greater return. They don't understand or appreciate constantly increasing taxes. That's the side I've been on since joining the Council and it's the side I'll continue to defend.