SIM CITY Columbus

Triple Toe Loop Double Sow Cow!!  

I'm trying to figure out how to get this into my common everyday language.
Maybe if I'm just sitting here quietly and yell it out!

Triple Lutz Sow Cow Triple Spin Toe Loop Camel!


That would be awesome. Of course not being an ice skater and actually afraid of skates (I had a horrific accident as a child when I was a goalie and fell backward and stabbed my butt with the back end of my skates and when I say horrific I mean it hurt a lot and drew blood!) I have never tried any of the above moves on purpose.

I have done a few Sow Cows (officially known as Salchow's, invented by a Swedish skater named Ulrich Salchow) in my life but purely by accident. A salchow is when you jump with a takeoff from a back inside edge of your skate and land on the back outside edge of the opposite foot after one or more rotations in the air. Yea - I've done this several times when I was a goalie. This might have been the move I was attempting during the horrific incident.

So my career as an ice skater came to an abrupt end.

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Here is a photo I took this morning. I loved the sun.  A typical February morning in Wisconsin.

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New business in Columbus - these guys are always sneaking in without fanfare. We all know about Mama Mia's on 112 E James St with Vinnie (a New York native) bringing his family's old world Italian recipes into town.

We also have Just the Numbers a new tax and accounting firm on 146 E Mill Street. I have heard they are giving away free samples of random numbers.

In other news Columbus will be the COVER STORY on the new Wisconsin Builder magazine in March and I heard we have a water problem. Yea, seems with a few larger businesses leaving the town who were major water users AND with Columbus residents being frugal the Columbus Water and Light are not making enough money. I think I heard that in order to save tax payer dollars every third Tuesday will be "dry" day in Columbus with no water being pumped.

Or maybe I'm just making that up, I'm not sure (I'm a little Olympic sleep deprived).

OH - and before there is an entire page of complaints in the Columbus Journal . . . the new police station WILL get a flag. They are not becoming communists or anything. I'm sure if Nancy Osterhaus was still Mayor she would be getting blamed for the lack of flags and some fire fighters would be let go for some reason.

And I know 95% of you do not care but Moody's (who perform financial research and analysis on commercial and government entities) grilled the powers that be about the financials of Columbus and while the C-bus credit rating stayed the same (a healthy A3) they are looking at trending UP to a better rating perhaps in the next few years.

For those still awake there are 21 grades in the Moody's rating system with A3 being #7.

A3 is a "upper-medium grade", subject to "low credit risk", but that have elements "present that suggest a susceptibility to impairment over the long term".

The "susceptibility to impairment" I think would be the TIF* areas.

TIF = tax incremental financing which is a tool to use future gains in taxes to finance current improvements. You borrow money now knowing (hoping) that this money will go for improvements in the TIF area which will bring future gains.

Sounds good but one of the criticism is that many communities borrow TIF money on things that will be built up ANYWAY on their own. I'm not saying this is what will happen to Columbus but if not done properly TIF can be a problem in the future and this is why Moody's was concerned.

To be honest I do not know the exact nature of the Columbus TIF projects but will keep my eyes open. I'm not a big fan of TIF personally because studies have shown that commercial TIF districts reduce commercial property value growth in the non-TIF part of the same municipality. Which is logical, help one store in a TIF district and it will hurt the stores NOT in the TIF so it's a break even.


HOWEVER - if you use TIF money for industrial areas you do not get this trade off because the industry sells to outside forces not taking away from other community sources. 

HOWEVER - I do not know the nature of the Columbus TIF projects (I closed my eyes just for a couple seconds and woke up when I was falling backwards).

There is one area that I believe TIF could be very useful and eminent domain could be used to capture a certain area of town which is sort of blighty (which is fun in SIM CITY but in reality could piss some people off).  Instead of trying purchase this blighty area JUST TAKE the DAM area!

Just an idea.

So that is my take on TIFs. Hopefully I can get a better handle on what the Columbus TIF projects are all about.  I just love this new SIM CITY Columbus game.  It's sort of creepy how real life and a real computer Simulation all come together.

Have a great Tuesday.
Rod