11 December 2014 Dearborn County Redevelopment Meeting Notes

11 December 2014 Dearborn County Redevelopment Meeting Notes

Present: Dave Deddens, Chairman, Jim Helms, John Rahe, Jim Deaton, and Dennis Kraus, Sr., 

ABSENT: Dusty Burress (non- voting school board member) He hasn’t been there for a long time.

Also present: Terri Randall, county administrator and economic development director, Andrea Ewan, attorney, Sue Hayden, minute taker, Gayle Pennington, Auditor and DCRC treasurer, and Randy Maxwell, Consultant.

Guinevere Emery and Kevin Lynch were present. Celeste Calvitto (Bright Beacon) was present.

MINUTES- Approval of Oct 9th minutes- No meeting in November.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS:

Property on Randall Avenue with Industrial Park Sign- Terri Randall said this is going to be a challenge. Doug Denmure the attorney said he did not know the widow who was the owner of the property. The property is still deeded in the deceased husband’s name. No further info on that yet.

CLAIMS AND FINANCIALS- $6,068.75 claims-general expenses:

Fund 4931 got a $3000 rental ck for 40 acres from Tom Stone

Maxwell $750 + $625

Terri and Sue salaries- $866.25 + $1732.50

International ED Council membership $385

Epop studios - $135 web hosting and updates

Collins Heeb Miller & Co- audit 2013- $1200

Andrea Ewan- $375- attorney Oct-Dec

Grant expense to pay for Oren Turner- $7166.68 Nov-Dec

The balances of accounts and TIFs were read out into the record:

Fund 4931- $396,953.95

Fund 4932- Commission Match- $500,000

Fund Growth and Development-$500,000

Fud 4301 West Aurora TIF- $181,102.37

Fund 4302 St Leon Kelso TIF- $89,183.88

Fund 4303 St. Leon Harrison Township TIF- $36,553,43

Fund 4304 West Harrison TIF- $23,733.10

Fund 9139 Economic Dev Research Grant- $84,479.74

Deaton and Rahe were suggesting making an area west of Dillsboro into a TIF area in the future. It is close to the sewage disposal plant. randall suggested they don’t TIF it until they have something viable or it will not be useful at first. 

Membership /REDI Cincinnati 2015 and Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce- Kevin Lynch said that they should be involved in certain organizations in the Cincinnati region that we should be involved in some of those. He knows Terri has info on one of those in particular. He knows from OKI and his involvement that there are a lot of connections to be made- things like seeing distribution warehouses on the way to Seymour for example. Terri Randall said it is like $875 a year for the Chamber there. And REDI is another. She said they keep seeing Ohio KY region and NOT hearing IND. in that. In Economic Development there is a lot of this type of organization. REDI wanted to have her and Commissioner Lynch come over to meet with them. It’s  little pricey. $5,000 is the first level and $10,000 gets you a seat on the board and you get all the RFI’s that come in. It would generate more leads. We are a Cinti market- not and INDY market. It’s a pay to play. Rahe said he has mixed emotions on this. We are sort of the red headed step children in there. Lynch said he agrees somewhat. But we want to be in the room. It’s in the Provident Bank Building on 4th street. Kevin used to work next door to them. He also had lunch with the Cincinnati Business magazine editor. He said he didn’t have anyone over here to get information here. Lynch looked over to Celeste Calvitto to share with him maybe as they are both monthly publications. Randall said we have not done enough to build these relationships.Helms said that the Cincinnati Business Courier was not really receptive to us. Helms said the value is the leads. Randall said that Texas was on everyone’s radar as the place everyone is moving. One of the speakers said we should be asking about What’s up with Indiana? As the next big place to be. Looking regionally and how transit works- Kevin knows about that. The new president of IEDC said that we need to be looking at regional markets. Randall asked him at the presentation - How do you look at someone who is a border county like us with TWO states on our borders. He answered her question politically she said. Lynch said that he has had conversations with the airport board that there is a need for  a certain number of flights to certain points like say Raleigh NC etc. Lynch said that CVG will never be a hub like it used to be. But to get new flights we need to get info on needed flights for our businesses. [NOTE: This entire discussion seems like a deja vu experience. The more new people the more they redo the same old methods that smaller markets use to shore up their image. Paying to sit on a board is backwards. The big players get PAID to sit on a board. You need to get more experience before you get to the big players or they will not respect your plans. This goes beyond schmoozing. Get a list of the current board and see what each has to offer- look them up. What do they bring to the table? What will you get for $10,000? What do we bring to the table? What do they want from us - besides the obvious $10,000? REALLY.]

IVY Tech Advanced Manufacturing Lab- Randall brought up Chancellor Chris Lowery (sp?) at IVY Tech and said that one of Pence’s initiatives is to get people to work and the IVY Tech programs are part of this. Lawrenceburg gave a grant to the Industrial Park IVY Tech campus to build research additional lab there.This would create the workers for jobs. Deaton said we also pull on Cincinnati for jobs. She has been working with Grant Hughes and Oren and IVY Tech to decide what kind of equipment etc should go into that lab. Lowery is willing to come over and talk to us. Helms said that Indiana is a major manufacturing state and now is valued as a place to get trained and make a pretty good salary. We need to get a qualified work source. Helms said it is now coming together in the past 3-4 years. Lynch closed out with a Merry Christmas to everybody and left. (then came back)

Randy Maxwell said he had nothing to add today.

NEW BUSINESS:

Schedule of 2015 meetings proposed dates and time- The meetings will now be at 9 AM on the second Thursday of the month. 

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OFFICER’S REPORT- Randall

Meeting with Genesee & Wyoming Railroad/ED goals and Whitewater Mill Spur- has about 7 miles in our county. The agreement is that Whitewater Mill was going to pay for the upgrade for the spur and it is costing a lot. The Mill is asking for help as costs is high. She said that she can’t market the rail if it is not there. They will do the upgrade but they are looking for help to get the rail upgraded and need some help with grants etc. Maxwell said there was a large amount of anxiety until they were sure they had the upgrades to get the wheat in for the flour mill. Rail up to Brookville for Owens Corning from US 50 by Kilby is poorly maintained and there was a slip- so now the granular for Owens Corning is being trucked in now. They are trying to coordinate with our rail to get more traffic there and have a 10 minute truck trip to Brookville then. Lynch said that Gennesee Wyoming is tied to the eastern corridor in Cincinnati. There is also that rail to Chicago that is still being talked about. Economics don’t play out with AMTRAK but maybe coordinate it with CSX too maybe and then it would. They had been favoring the line thru Oxford to  tie into Miami students rather than thru Dearborn County. Maxwell wanted it thru Dearborn County. Kevin and Maxwell departed at 9 AM. 

District maps and parcels- Mark McCormack from Planning and Zoning- came in to talk about the TIF districts. He said that Planning and Zoning was not involved with them in 2006 other than holding one of the public hearings for them. He said that Paul Kunkel had asked them to provide boundary issue help with making the parcels and the TIF lines work. The St. Leon one is mostly correct but the others were amended.this affected the taxes.He was not sure about residential improvements as being figured into the TIF money. He was pretty sure they couldn’t do that but they needed to check on this. The assessor’s office has been adding that in. It may need to be corrected. Deadens asked if we could expand the St Leon TIF across the highway and McCormack said that you would have to deal with St Leon for that. McCormack said they are doing different approach in St. Leon. The West Aurora TIF map needed a lot of work to get parcel boundaries. He said they are collecting on areas that aren’t in the TIF. The West Harrison TIF didn’t even have the Mills property in it an they fixed that before that went in. Pennington said that she agreed with Mark that it was a mess. Legislation is looking at TIFs too. Randall proposed getting Umbaugh and or London Witte to look at this. Rahe said that we have had professionals fix these things and it keeps coming up as not fixed.To do: Updated parcel list is necessary. Then see what they collect on.Andrea Ewan said their office could do the parcel work at less cost. [NOTE: Rahe is correct - This was done originally consulting with Barnes and Thornburg as Richard Butler, the attorney at the time said they needed someone well versed in TIFs. Much of this is in-house work as the language of the boilerplate documents was the same in each set up before. It might be smart to attend a seminar on TIFs if they are uncomfortable with them.]   

CVTB Funding- They will be sending $50,000 check to DCRC next week.They want the DCRC to report back to them. Randall said - Maybe we use their fund to meet their objectives.

SEC Bond Disclosure- received Tom Pitman’s notice that if we issue bonds you have some rules to comply with. So they are for older bonds. These new bonds we issued and and we did these correctly per Randall. 

Annual Audit- When EDI did this out of house at Lovell Group. After this audit from August 2013 the rest are done by State Board of Accounts. 

Visit to Henry County New Castle ED Offices- They had gotten Boar’s Head meats facility and they have done two spec buildings there. Randall’s daughter lives there so she visited their Econ Dev offices when she was there visiting her daughter. She heard about a program where you can certify your work force with an outside agency. This designation is helpful in attracting outside business. She will give that info out and look more into it- with Jim Helms. 

EDI Website Updates- Randall said Andrea works with them ( DCEDI). Andrea said - sort of. Randall said that they were going to disband. Until someone in the community steps up to do that… but EDI is dissolving for sure. Bill Ritzmann is recommending that to the board. It needs it’s own tax ID per Ewan as it is still tied to the Chamber. Ewan does not want a new entity under the chamber. They should be separate. IF they form one. All the grant money came in from Lawrenceburg and it got screwed up. Someone has to get people like Duke to invest money in that. She said the EDI website continues and should be a county wide marketing arm. Oren does this also. It hasn’t been all on Terri.  

Purdue University- Strategic Doing, Data Assistance & BRE Survey- Has been helping us with clusters and current assets. She, Hughes, Oren, Guinevere, Shane….have been involved in this.This was not clear as to what they were doing with us.

Whitewater Mill Update- Ribbon Cutting Tentative Date March 17, 2015- 35 employees.

 H.Nagele & Son Project Update- Estimated start Spring/Summer 2015- about 35 employees is estimated by 2017.

Helms congratulated Deddens on the Sky Line ground-breaking and all the free coneys. He left at 9:45AM

ATTORNEY’S REPORT- none

OTHER BUSINESS- I asked if they could consider recording their meetings and they will see if they can move the microphone to the table. They didn’t want to move to the chairs like all the other boards as they really like to sit in the circle with each other.

ADJOURNMENT - 9:50 AM

Christine Brauer Mueller

Lawrenceburg Township