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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