TIF for your thoughts

Next up: Town Center brainstorm, and cookies!
As predicted, Thursday night's City Commission work session on Tax Incremental Financing and how it might work in Town Center wasn't nearly as fun as the previous week's brainstorm hosted by the city's environmental committee.
Maybe that was the problem. It was a TIF meeting instead of a brainstorm.
Don't get me wrong. The presenters, attorney and Tennessee TIF expert Mark Mamantov and investment guru Rick Delaney of Morgan-Keegan gave detailed presentations on how this type of investment can be used to jump-start projects. Unfortunately, it seems almost certain that without county as well as city support, TIFs would not pump enough extra cash into Town Center projects to make the special financing worth it. And apparently Williamson County has declared it's not interested in TIFs unless they are for big corporate projects like Nissan that bring in lots of high-paying jobs.
The meeting did accomplish what it set out to do: It provided the city commission information about TIFs (and PILOTs and GOs and other such things that mostly went right over my head).
What it didn't do was give any traction to help spur Town Center discussion along, though I suppose just having all the interested parties in the same room breathing the same air was a start.
So may I suggest a second meeting of all who attended last night. Let's schedule an old-fashioned brainstorm session, much like the green committee did. Make it mandatory or at least "highly recommended" for City Commissioners and key staff to attend. Make it so enticing that everyone with any interest in Town Center will beg for an invite. Introduce Commissioner Anne Dunn to everyone involved, so she will never again have to say "I don't know who to deal with" when referring to those who have expressed interest in or made investments in the downtown commercial district.
Have white boards all over the room for ideas on how to get things started. Talk about the pros and cons of a master plan openly and with open minds. Breakout out into small groups with each commissioner assigned to a group of property and business owners to simply listen to what they have to say. And vice versa. Start forging new relationships.
And most importantly, advertise and provide some really good desserts. That always brings a crowd. In fact, I volunteer to bake cookies.
In the meantime, I would love to see comments posted here from those who attended Thursday night's TIF session. Or, feel free to email thoughts to me at brentword@comcast.net.