Thursday, March 13, 2014

13 March 2014 Dearborn County Redevelopment Meeting Notes


13 March 2014 Dearborn County Redevelopment Meeting Notes         

Present: Dave Deddens, Chairman, John Rahe, Jim Deaton, Maynard Barrett, and Dusty Burress (non- voting school board member)

ABSENT: Jim Helms

Also present:Terri Randall, Andrea Ewan, Sue Hayden, and Randy Maxwell

Erika Schmidt Russell (Register Publications) covered this meeting

Approved the  February minutes.

Billboard on Stone property – Deddens said Stone wants $1000/month for 3 lights at night also. Contract with EDI and Stone is void. Deddens told Stone that was too expensive. Randall asked if we felt a need for the billboard and Barrett said to get rid of it. It is not where the leads are coming from. Rahe said it doesn’t sound like it is of value to us. Randall said she’d tried to find people who want to use it for business in the area. She said it is not our job to market it. He is a great guy- just hard-nosed about his prices. Preparing a communication to Stone to say they are giving notice and pay up to the 30 days prior to that to be finished by March 31st. That means we paid for 3 months total in 2014.

Financials- presented by Sue Hayden. It included a running total for all their accounts. Randall said she and Sue are going to sit down with Leah Bailey and Gayle Pennington and see how they are tracking their funds. If money comes in for visioning or the redevelopment position they have to be tracked separately. Barrett said Gayle can do it as she does it for council. Randall wants to be sure their funds don’t get sideways or end up back in county general at the end of the year. $456,901 is in the account. That does not include the TIF funds. Approved the financials.

Claims- $10,288.26- one claim for $6,000 is on there from London Witte for Dec- Feb on Whitewater Mills. They had to do a lot of actuarial calculations on that bond per Randall. Approved.

Randall said when we did the budget we put together a $100,000 budget. Because of the payroll for my position and Sue’s we had to put line items in there and I reduced the professional and consulting services section. She needs this board to adopt your amended budget. That is so they get this for SBOA. Deaton said the mileage was a low amount. They explained other sources for that. Approved.

Annual report- Randall- economic development position was to be full time. More she investigated it she thought it would end up as perceived as county and had our benefits etc. She is still working on it.

She decided to make it a contract position with a 1099 on the $100,000 coordinator position on the visioning. Still moving along and waiting for the interlocal from Lawrenceburg.

Smaller communities completing their  plans and McCormack is completing the county plan. They can get Purdue Univ to get them low or no cost stats for us. She is meeting with them on March 17. What kinds of industry clusters can we attract? They can help with that and market them This can target our recruitment. She has not engaged any consultants yet. She is pretty excited about that.

CVTB meeting on the 18th of March- and Randall and some commissioners and any Redevelopment members to go and form a relationship there. Hollywood’s new head will be there. A good way to get in there. Wants to see if they will consider $50,000 again for this redevelopment organization again.

Indiana Board of realtors- from Neff- showing an economic development link etc. It costs $450-600 a year to join. Leery of doing too much as we don’t have too much inventory yet.

 Deddens went to a Region 9 gathering to see what IEDC and others are doing there. Looking for a helicopter tour to have developers look over the region. $1000 or $2000 a year to join the I-74 corridor group. Chamber hadn’t paid last year and EDI took care of it after that per Maxwell. Agreed with Randall- so they will join the group.

For the website-  Randall went to IEDC and got passwords for zoom prospector. Developers use this tool. She will be the master for Dearborn County and Al Abdon for example can make changes for Greendale. PIMS is another website that gets used. This needs to step up on the priority list so we can even get people to take a look. They can reuse EDI folders that they have a ton of and re-label them to change the name from DCEDI and the website name.

Randy Maxwell wanted to talk about the flood plain study. Contractual obligation we inherited on Stone property form Hirlinger to follow up on. TIF projections for Mill and Hirlinger property: He explained it so they know why we are doing what we are doing. This helps with ROI questions. Goes from 2016-2038 as that is answer for elected officials questioning it. Give them their TIF back for their real property for years 1-15. And 50% of personal property up to max of $600,000. $96,481 for half personal property tax per year on Mills. In year 15 there is a windfall of money paid back to the TIF.  Hirlinger project is also on this spreadsheet. You have to be careful and don’t over-commit. This helps you to plan and you can borrow against this revenue. This will help to grow the area. Their Greendale redevelopment has almost $1million a year now. This was established in 2006 with a 30 year life. They (Redevelopment) carved out a new area to set it for 25 years to help make up for lack of what we got in last 8 years. If the sewer line hadn’t been run we wouldn’t be where we are now. No other municipality has done the personal property tax as part of TIF here. This is only good if you have a large manufacturer. This TIF money can only be used certain things within the TIF. He thinks these projections will probably be true. Randall said this is why London Witte is so important. Hoosier Energy has a cost model to cost out the project ahead of time. Our estimates were low. IEC had led them to the Hoosier Energy cost model.  Maxwell said this was a pleasant surprised and that is why we went after that deal. This is what he does for all their Greendale work also. He has wanted to share this the last couple months with the board. Rahe said it was 15 he thought. Maxwell said it used to be 30 years- now it is a max of 25 years. Deaton asked how difficult it was to establish a TIF. The 25 year carve out was for the mills. The county starts getting taxes after the TIF period ends. Once the nest egg is built up it helps with others in the TIF. But it still takes 25 years before the community gets to see these taxes. Rahe said it is for the whole community- not an empire for us.Randall said she needs this for when Denny Kraus asked about ROI the other night. Ohio does not have a personal property tax and that is our competition. Carlisle was doing it under their port authority. No property taxes that way. We had to give taxes back to them to compete. Hoping the next ones won’t be that much.

Survey for West Harrison corridor. Maxwell has the RFP for that West Harrison corridor. Intuitively he knows that flood plain is different and has not been analyzed in 40 years even after Brookville Dam was built. The next step is to resurvey the river channel. The surveyors will take 5 shots ever 1000 feet for 8 miles. All that data will go to the consultant to see if the river has changed much, deepened etc in last 40 years. Hopefully the data will be able to see if it is worth appealing to Corps of Engineers and FEMA etc to see if the flood plain can be built. $35,000 cost. GPS works well without tree leaves etc. $20,000 is needed approximately to get the surveyors work done. Then more for analysis. Randall said we highly recommend doing it.  (Who is we?) Maxwell said the board needs to authorize them to contract with a surveyor. Randall is authorized to contract with a surveyor for the Dearborn County river channel of the Whitewater River for and amount not to exceed $20,000. Approved. Flood survey can be paid with TIF money.

Maxwell said the labor study is needed and contacted Mark McCormack of Planning and the zoom prospector that the state subscribes to he played with data. He drew a 30 minute drive circle around it. He said they can create their own labor study. We need to ignore state lines when we are looking for labor. Companies are more interested in the right employees. Taxes are not as big an incentive for people looking for engineers or other professionals. They need the labor base. Economic development is really PEOPLE development. That is what Maxwell learned from his Ball State course.

Randall- IEDC leads said 60% are businesses looking for an existing building. 32 ft clear height and 50,000 sq. ft. or 75,000 sq ft. She thinks that is a new trend and maybe we should look at it. Some communities are doing this. Will research more on this and see if we want to build on spec. Maxwell said this could save money and start the company faster. Takes 18-24 months to get the building done. Most of them want to lease those buildings. So the building is not owned. Maxwell said that seems to be the way of the world. Lease back is risky for everyone. TIF district is the tax base business. Provide jobs for your people.

Randall said that March 15- annual report is due to DLGF and she will file that there this week. [NOTEW: That report should be on file with the County Commissioners if anyone wants a copy.]

$38,000 is in West Harrison TIF.

Randall talked aboutTom Dickey who worked for Duke Realty and Econ Dev Director for Fishers, IN. He will be helpful to us- she met with him. She thinks that private business will drive economic development. We will network and all. We are 3-6 months away from presenting a whole master plan for the corridor. Randy Maxwell concurred.

Chris Mueller- brought up being unable to locate the board vote on paying Randall $10,000 for 2013 as mentioned at Council this week. As a point of housekeeping- the board needs to remember that nothing is decided in executive session. Just discussed. Then a decision if there is one – is made in the public meeting. There was no response to this.

Meeting adjourned at 10 AM

After the meeting adjourned, Maynard Barrett made a point of reassuring Terri Randall that Denny Kraus meant nothing personal and there were no grudges. This was in reference to the Council meeting apparently..

Christine Brauer Mueller

Lawrenceburg Township

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