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Ben de Jong

Oct 3, 2026

BrianHOST
17:26
So what would you tell, like, if I was the pure activist compared to, and you're the actual, you know, getting your hands dirty type person?
17:37
Yeah, I mean, it kind of comes down to the fact that even though I'm a libertarian and I'm very principled, I'm also elected to represent the population.
17:45
And the population is more often than not, is not going to be as principled as I am.
17:51
And you do have to sometimes strike that balance of what do I want versus what is, what is the, what is the population want? And then what is best for the city? You know, you kind of have to juggle sometimes a lot of different, you know, competing narratives or, you know, uh, not just narratives, but a lot of competing, the will of, you know, anytime you deal with people on a larger scale, you know, we have recently some land that came up for sale and the developer who is looking at developing some apartments, you know, he wanted to use a loophole called Brownfield TIF, which is a way to basically kind of borrow from your initial tax base of what the future property would be worth to pay the initial building fees for the building.
18:46
So it's a way to kind of steal taxes that you would be paying in the future and spending it now.
18:53
And it's a government solution to a government problem, which I'm not a big fan of at all.
19:00
But the reality is it's become so expensive to build in Michigan.

17 MINS LATER

BrianHOST
36:21
there, do you have an idea?

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