The city of Minneapolis is requiring businesses destroyed by the recent riots to pre-pay their 2020 property taxes before they can even officially demolish and rebuild their businesses.
The city allowed these businesses to be destroyed, and now wants a ransom from the very people they victimized. When do the business owners start rioting, or at the very least, packing up and leaving?
This is so outrageous.
Jeffrey Meitrodt reports at the Star Tribune:
Landscape of rubble persists as Minneapolis demands taxes in exchange for permitsIn Minneapolis, on a desolate lot where Don Blyly’s bookstore stood before being destroyed in the May riots, two men finish their cigarettes and then walk through a dangerous landscape filled with slippery debris and sharp objects. The city won’t let Blyly haul away his wreckage without a permit, and he can’t get a contractor to tell him how much it will cost to rebuild the store until that happens.In St. Paul, where Jim Stage’s pharmacy burned down during the same disturbances, crews have already removed the bricks and scorched timbers. A steel fence keeps out trespassers. Stage expects construction of his new Lloyd’s Pharmacy to begin later this month.The main reason for the different recoveries is simple: Minneapolis requires owners to prepay the second half of their 2020 property taxes in order to obtain a demolition permit. St. Paul does not.“Minneapolis has not been particularly friendly toward business for some time,” said Blyly, who prepaid $8,847 in taxes last week but still hasn’t received his demolition permit. “They say they want to be helpful, but they certainly have not been.”
Just so we’re clear, this is not nickels and dimes. It’s not even a hundred or five-hundred dollars. It’s real money:
Most property owners must pay $35,000 to $100,000 to clear their sites of debris, with larger tracts — such as strip shopping centers — costing as much as $400,000, according to property owners. That doesn’t include the money those owners must pay to get their permits. On average, the owners of properties destroyed or significantly damaged owe $25,000 in taxes for the second half of 2020, which come due in October, according to a Star Tribune review of county property records.
The leaders of Minneapolis let this happen.
This report from CBS News in Minnesota is from August 5th. Businesses were already thinking about leaving the city. How many more will leave now?
Dozens Of Businesses Consider Moving Out Of Downtown MinneapolisDowntown Minneapolis is at risk of losing dozens of businesses.Cruising through downtown Minneapolis is not what it once was. On some stretches the largest city in the state looks more like a ghost town.“This is by far the biggest challenge that I’ve ever had in my 20 years of owning businesses downtown,” said Erik Forsberg, who owns Devil’s Advocate and two other downtown restaurants. They’ve been closed since COVID-19 started and crime multiplied.A new survey by the Downtown Council shows 45 business owners say they are considering leaving downtown – citing the lack of people working or socializing downtown – and the idea that the police department could be dismantled.Though they won’t say which businesses are considering pulling out of downtown, the council says one of the businesses employs 600 people.That could mean a lot of empty spaces.
Every time you think things in Minneapolis couldn’t get worse, they do.
Featured image via YouTube.
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