THE PROVIDENCE CITY COUNCIL on Thursday postponed a final decision on 30-year extensions to the city's tax and lease agreements with ProvPort Inc., sending the agreements back to the finance committee for further review. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
PROVIDENCE – The new City Council postponed final decisions on tax and lease agreements with ProvPort Inc. on Thursday, opting to send the proposals back to the Committee on Finance for further review. The delay comes after the council gave first passage to the deals in December. However, seven of the 15 council members have…
Glad to see the new Council questioning this.
This doesn’t make sense for the taxpayers. If you read this carefully: ProvPort (which is run by the Waterson family which owns Waterson Terminal Services which manages the port) owns the land and leases this land to the Providence Redevelopment Agency (PRA) which in turn issues tax-free bonds to pay the city and then subleases the same land back to ProvPort.
Sounds like the PRA issues taxpayer backed bonds to A) make the payments (in lieu of property taxes) to PVD on behalf of ProvPort and B) to make the land lease payments to ProvPort.
Sounds like taxpayers are floating bonds to pay PVD (i.e., themselves) property taxes that ProvPort should be paying.
Hopefully, the new City Council Members will be smart enough to vote against this Ponzi scheme.
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Glad to see the new Council questioning this.
This doesn’t make sense for the taxpayers. If you read this carefully: ProvPort (which is run by the Waterson family which owns Waterson Terminal Services which manages the port) owns the land and leases this land to the Providence Redevelopment Agency (PRA) which in turn issues tax-free bonds to pay the city and then subleases the same land back to ProvPort.
Sounds like the PRA issues taxpayer backed bonds to A) make the payments (in lieu of property taxes) to PVD on behalf of ProvPort and B) to make the land lease payments to ProvPort.
Sounds like taxpayers are floating bonds to pay PVD (i.e., themselves) property taxes that ProvPort should be paying.
Hopefully, the new City Council Members will be smart enough to vote against this Ponzi scheme.