CLEVELAND, Ohio — Mayor Justin Bibb’s use of a powerful and controversial tax incentive tool to spur economic development in Cleveland’s downtown and on the lakefront was a first for the city.
Now, Bibb wants to take the same concept and apply it to a large swath of the city’s East Side, hoping to harness the power of tax-increment financing – or a TIF – to entice private developers to invest in economically depressed residential neighborhoods.
The proposal raises questions about fairness, not just for the East Side neighborhoods that have historically left behind by developers, but also for organizations like libraries, community colleges and parks that can lose out on millions of tax dollars that eventually flow from the TIF-fueled new developments…