It’s always welcome news when businesses come to town, especially ones that will generate much-needed sales tax revenue for a village like North Riverside, which lives and dies with the ebbs and flows of that particular revenue stream.
But those corporate titans sure do love them some welfare, don’t they? Not for those who might actually need it necessarily, of course. But they do like it for themselves.
Darden Restaurants came to North Riverside officials with their hands out, asking for what amounted to a one-year sales tax holiday from the village. The village balked at that offer, which would have cost them more than $200,000, but settled for waiving the building permit fees for two restaurants, a figure that comes out to about $150,000. That money now won’t be coming to North Riverside when those buildings get built.
Just wait’ll Costco comes looking for incentives. Oh, sure, the long-term benefits for the village, blah, blah, blah. It’s welfare. But for our corporate overlords, we’ll submit to anything to gain minimum-wage jobs and sales tax receipts.
The next time someone pushes for welfare reform, we know where we’ll be looking for it to happen.
