Whatever gets you closer to "God".

Another project at the taxpayers expense fully vetted by the woman of allegedly ill reputes at the Naples Daily News and at the Collier County Commission.

Actually the word I used began with W and ended with e-s, but the prostitutes at the website changed it!

God, pizza and the Colliers in all of our pocketbooks.

I see participation of Church and State here, not separation.

I think there are too many organizations not paying property taxes. Religious, educational, whatever, they need to be charged a fee or something for all the services and infrastructure the rest of the community must provide and pay for.

We, unless we live in Ave Maria, are not "on the hook" for these bonds. They are the obligation of Ave Maria residents and/or the University. The author of the article reports that fact, but buries it in a story intended to make everything look sleazy or underhanded.

While you don't have to agree with the purpose of Ave Maria University, it is hard to ignore the jobs and payroll it is delivering at a time when other building and development have all but disappeared.

Without access to attractive financing projects like this will not get built and communities will not get the benefits of them.

I was at Ave Maria last week. It is dead. There is no housing being built. The town center is lifeless and has mostly empty buildings. And, the cathedral, when looked at from the side, looks like a giant spool of thread - Ugly. Cheap money building a cheap looking church on cheap property. The Colliers and the Catholic church will suck all the money out of anyone, even a billionaire pizza king. Monaghan - suckerrrrr.

#7 is right. What this article exposes is that the taxpayers are unfairly funding the enterprise. It's very like the arrangements with Wall-Mart (or the new stadiums in various cities).

The investors are getting a free lunch at taxpayers' expense. Investor profits costs everyone in Collier County and is especially detrimental to public schools. All that property tax, impact fees and sales tax are collected but not rendered to the County. So the rest of us stuff the investors' pockets with our tax money.

Read the book _Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)_ by David Cay Johnston (Hardcover - Dec 27, 2007). It's in the library.

#8: this "attractive financing" is sleazy and underhanded. Every taxpayer in Collier is "on the hook." I support having Ave Maria here; but I do not approve of the financing.

Don't worry. You'll get away with it. Such attractive financing is way beyond the ken of most of the folks who are getting screwed.

Good article, Liam Dillon. But you'll probably not work at the new NDN building!

What if you were the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation, rich in assets in every pocket of the globe, but not allowed to use those assets to generate more wealth?

The Catholic Church in America alone would rank right in the middle of the Fortune 500 list of companies, competing with the likes of drug giant Schering-Plough and home builder Pulte Homes.

The Catholic Church has numerous assets, including a vast amount of real estate. It owns more land globally than any other organization on the planet.

The church’s main revenue source comes from parishioner contributions.

Total donations made at a parish level in 2003 were $8 BILLION.

$8,000,000,000.00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com

PamelaA - There is no expense to taxpayers, other than those who live in Ave Maria. Why is this even a story? Doesn't this kind of financing happen all the time in Florida? If a new town is being built, which brings jobs and opportunity, what's wrong with giving the town access to municipal credit markets?

re Bramble post #7

perhaps you would then like to see the churches ..of all denominations.... bill the communities for the charity work they do in that community that does not cost the taxpayers any money or time

Who do you think is paying for the road getting there?

#12 GateMo: No expense to taxpayers!!? The arrangement described in the article erodes the tax base and shifts a burden onto everyone else!

Like Crist in the Alligator Alley proposal, Colorado, Illinois, and Chicago leased toll roads to private investors with bids coming in from all over the world.

Citigroup, the Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley are among those creating investment pools to acquire public assets: the Brooklyn Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, parks parking garages, water mains, and sewer systems.

_Business Week_ estimates that a hundred billion dollars worth of public assets were sold in 2007-'08. When built, these public assets were our common property. In private hands, their value can be written off by the new owners to reduce their taxes: tax exemptions, tax deductions, tax sharing agreements.

Reducing taxes for the wealthy means increasing taxes for everyone else.

The losers are the taxpayers who bought and paid for these facilities. More than a third of their value is used to reduce revenues to the government--easing the burden on the wealthy investors and adding to those of everyone else. And we will have to pay for them all over again through user charges.

Who pays for the road expansions, the schools, the fire departments? Not the bond holders.

You are right about one thing: this kind of financing does occur all the time in Florida--it's why we're nearly bankrupt; it's why our schools and other public services are not funded this year (or for the foreseeable future). It's why our electric rates, sewer and water rates and everything else are going through the roof! All the taxes that should have gone for these things have, instead, gone into the already stuffed pockets of the wealthy.

It's the same thing that's wrong with bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and paying for the Iraq war with taxpayer money that we haven't collected yet. Home finance lenders and war profiteers get to line their bank accounts with our tax money.

Like I said, though. AM will get away with it. Folks like you won't read the book.

May God help the people that bought those bonds in todays real estate markets. Would not be my first choice even if they are tax free.

Actually, it's brilliant. You own massive amounts of land zoned agricultural adjacent to the everglades and an hour or two from the beaches. But you hook up with a pizza entrepreneur and developers to figure out how to maximize profits. The pizza guy has already built a religous college in another state and knows how to work the not-for-profit angle.

They figure out that if you put a religous spin on the development not only do you get a marketing gimmick (that targets SWFL's wealthy catholics) that draws huge donations and willing investors in the tax free bonds, but the for-profit developers also get to piggy back on all these taxexempt investments.

One question though....how are these bonds going to be paid back if there are no sales in AM? Where are the fees etc. coming from? Who pays for the bonds if AM goes bankrupt? Are these bonds, as I suspect, governement insured? That means that, in the long run, you and I are going to be buying out the developer's funding bonds with our taxes.

Exactly where is the risk to the investors? If the risk is carried soley by the tax payers, then we need to make sure we are completely on top of who is getting awarded these plums. Pulte HOmes would not be on the top of my list. Habitat for Humanity maybe...but not private corporations.

This is an excellent story Liam. You are on the right track. Please keep going along these lines. You are going to win an investigative award someday. You really have the mind and heart and talent.

This 'town' sure seems like a large development, period. I am one who does not understand the complex and boring details a developer must undertake to create a town such as Ave Maria, but I'm willing to bet the money behind this venture would surely have the government (taxpayers) pay as much as possible to help them and lessen their risk. I believe this is a violation of the Separation of Church and State.

Please take the time (boring for almost everyone) to read

http://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/m...

If you _want_ to understand.

Bonds are conservative investments. Nobody's going to lose money in the long run.

Except the taxpayers.

flahill- You have hit on one of the more brilliant techniques in this masterminded development. How to get tax dollars donated to underwrite not only a private venture but a religious one as well, by bridging the funding to the 'educational' factor. Somehow, funding for religious universities is okay and loopholes through any problems with the separation of church and state.

Or does it? Ignoring for a moment the details from Liam’s separate article today regarding the fact that AMU is NOT accredited and therefore not really permitted access to even this loophole, I think the case can be made that indeed separation of church and state has been breached by underwriting a catholic university with taxpayer funding of any kind. A court challenge to this would be interesting. Can you imagine the uproar if the bonding was for the SWFL Muslim Law School?

Religious schools should be backed by donations only, which still can be written off the donor's taxes.

so NDN staff deleated PamelaA and myself from linking these loan scams to local issues. would this be some kind of if you separate the issues none of us rednecks will see that our local government is in past it's neck?

if AM goes under after maxing out it's credit, and local Gov is selling off everything to honor the Admin contracts and loan fees will NDN allow us to use their archives to say "told you so!"?

No mention about what happens when Ave Maria inevitably defaults?

For a religious organization, Ave Maria sure practices bad behavior. I guess since St. Tom the Pizza man will someday be canonized they can lie and sin all they want and all they have to do is go to confession and do a few Hail Marys and go back to lying on bond applications and press releases. The accreditation of this university was purchased in a box of Crackerjacks. But hey it's all good so long as the brainwashed flock goes out and scrapes their knees in front of planned parenthood for eternity.

Knee Jerk,

Ave Maria is not a religious Organization, it is a community that also houses a Catholic University. I guess by you definition, South Bend is a religious organization also.

Ava Maria is nothing more than a religious cult. Those that bought into it with bonds, property, or whatever will lose almost everything when it goes under, get out ASAP.

bossman, bossman, bossman, Ave Maria Town will SHINE.

Ave Maria is indeed a TOWN...established within the guidelines of our lovely State of Florida...with a cool little special taxing district or two, and some bonds to support it.

It's ONE-OF-A-KIND. A FIRST FOR COLLIER COUNTY...a college and a town built together is UNIQUE, and will be successful.

The students of this town are very impressive. They question everything in a Harvard way, and when they graduate, they give back to the communities they serve ten fold. Some may remain here in Naples, and I hope they stay here as they add a lot to our community.

Meanhwhile, you call it a cult, and then when the law school arrives, and you need a great ethical lawyer one day, you may find one at Ave Maria Town. They're growing by leaps and bounds.

I'm looking forward to what they offer to our CULTURE of Naples...and NO, they are not a cult by any means.

Heretic, you mentioned the Age of Aquarius, well do you know that the metal for Aquarius is URANIUM!!

Maybe all these fears of the end of days could be true as we end in a big bang

Ave Maria won't have to pay off any bad debts then, would they

A bond is not a bad debt...especially if it has an A rating.

What was the rating on these bonds? I'm sure Ave Maria Town has an "A" at least!

It was probably rated as an A...and they will be just fine...even if there is a big bang theory going on Britbird.

...a little bit of honesty here about the success/failure of Ave Maria: (1) In a terrible national housing market, in one of the worst regional housing markets in the country (S.W. Florida), Pulte continues to sell 2-4 homes a week in Ave Maria. That is success. (2)There are many established "Catholic" universities in the U.S., competition for students is intense, yet Ave Maria's student body will close to double this fall. That is a success. (3) I'm not sure of the exact numbers but from what I understand the private K-12 school is also enjoying growth (and it costs $6,000 a year to attend). If you want to critisize the use of legal tax strategies to develop towns, that is fair and reasonable. But when you lie about the facts, when you expose yourself as a bigoted fool, everything else you say should (and I believe will) be rejected as mindless dribble. Bossman1, Heretic, etc., I feel sorry for your public display of stupidity.