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Thanks Anna for your comments on my comment.

I very deeply recognize the cost of other tax exemptions and believe that they should have to be reauthorized on the same basis as budgetary expenditures instead of being permanent.

But to be very clear, this has nothing to do with the strawman you posit of being anti-tax. It has to do with fair taxation and transparency. It has to do with social benefits vs. benefits to privileged investors. Let me quote the Commerce Department’s brief on the MFTE that hits the nail on the head:

“Communities may be less likely to support incentives for market-rate development that use property tax increases, especially for high-end projects that do not seem to provide public benefits.

Shifted tax obligations are not usually calculated, meaning that the full impacts of this program may not be transparent, especially to affected property owners.

Depending on the popularity of the program, the total increases in property taxes could be equivalent in magnitude to affordable housing levies that would require voter approval and have tighter requirements (RCW 84.55.150).”

In other words, the public is less likely to support an MFTE that provides no public benefits but don’t worry City Council because it is not transparent, most of the public will never know. News Flash: We are trying to change that by making the public aware of it.

Finally, the Commerce Dept. points out that the alternative, if the public was made fully aware of this MFTE for market-rate housing would be to spend the publics’ tax dollars on an affordable housing levy (like the Home Fund) which has "TIGHTER REQUIREMENTS" (i.e., it directly guarantees the money is used for a social benefit).

You raise provocative but unhelpful questions about church exemptions and home schoolers. The church exemptions that you posit as a comparison to the MFTE are not something the City can choose not to do. You may not like churches or certain church practices, but this is a statewide law without a local government option while the MFTE is a purely city decided gift to investors. See RCW84.36.020, RCW84.36.800 WAC 458-16-110 and WAC 458-16-180 through 200.

Your rhetorical questions about swapping imaginary reductions in property taxes for those home schooling and public votes to revoke church exemptions and use the money for building more rental units points to a failure to address to the issue that is before the Council.

What do you say we have a referendum specifically on this issue? Let’s have the City Council put before the voters whether the City's current 8-year tax policy that guarantees millions for investors that the the rest of the public has to pay for but with no commensurate guarantee for affordable housing is how we want to tax ourselves? In a fair fight, I wager that the voters would reject it and, like the Commerce Department suggests, prefer to fund real affordable housing.

Fun fact: Only two cities in Thurston County have 8-year MFTEs. And that second one was Lacey which just recently enacted one for 2023. This is a choice of the city of Olympia to inflict higher taxes on the public for projects that “…do not seem to provide public benefits and that conclusion is buttressed by the state Joint Legislative Audit & Review Committee (JLARC).

P.S. In regards to the specter of suburban sprawl: There is no shortage of buildable lands within Olympia's Urban Growth Boundary according to the Thurston Regional Planning Council.