Jeffersonville officials want people in New Mexico to pay for their convention center and hotel

From Ben Zion Hershberg in the C-J...

Jeffersonville officials have applied for $25 million in federal tax credits in a move to attract investment in projects including a convention center and hotel aimed at revitalizing the city's west end.

"It would be the shot in the arm the convention center needs," Jim Urban, the city's planning director and deputy mayor, said yesterday of the tax credits, which the Treasury Department is to award in October....

Other projects that could be helped with such financing include a $13 million outpatient surgery center for Clark Memorial Hospital and $4 million for the renovation of retail and office space in the Quartermaster Depot on 10th Street, the request said.

Phil McCauley, a former deputy mayor who would serve on a committee that would allocate the tax credits, said he doesn't think the convention center and other listed projects would be dead without the credits. But he said it's clear, in a recession and tight credit market, that tax breaks would attract investors and developers....

So, we might be willing to pay for it, but it's better to have other people do it?