Board of Supervisors meetings haven't been quite as exciting after the 11th-hour fireworks that went down just before the class of snooze-thousand-eleven took their seats last month. Hopefully, the rookies will find their stride soon enough and start sniping at each other about banning non-vegan rubber bike tires or what have you, but as today's full board meeting gets underway (like, now-ish - you should tune in) we thought we might highlight some of the issues on today's agenda that seem to have people talking.
First up is this deal on tax breaks for Twitter, which we mentioned before. The Appeal has a nice roundup of where we stand now, but the gist of it is: the tweety-bloggy company threatened to move to Brisbane in order to get a better deal on their payroll taxes. So, the City was working on a deal to keep the company in town and also lure them to that gross section of Mid-Market. Some people (you know: lefties) seem to think this could lead to other large companies trying to leverage their size for better deals from the city - which is a valid concern, but we might also point out that 95% of Twitter's staff would rather die than work somewhere as unfashionable as Brisbane (where ever that is). So: grain of salt. Also, if the Board approves the current tax breaks they'll only be for new hires - not all employees - so the city wouldn't lose money on the deal, but Twitter might also hire like half the city tomorrow. So again: grain of salt.
The Board is also mulling over an Infrastructure Financing District for Rincon Hill, which would work similarly to Redevelopment in that it would drive private investment in neighborhood improvements, but it would get the city around some of those state-level cuts to redevelopment agencies (which may or may not be legal).
What else? Oh yeah, keep an eye out for resident bible-thumper Mark Trout who is hopefully incorrect about his Biblical prediction that something terrible will happen tomorrow.
