THE CORPORATE WELFARE THAT IS THE TAX INCREMENT AREA MOVES FORWARD WITH THE APPROVAL OF ITS FIRST READING.

ESTIMATES OF THE WINDFALL OF RICHES FROM THE TIA GOES FROM PROJECTED $32 MILLION IN 10 YEARS TO $20 MILLION IN TEN YEARS ONCE AGAIN PROVING THAT PROJECTIONS ARE HYPERBOLE AND THEY HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THE REVENUES WILL ACTUALLY BE

By Nicole Barde

bardeblog.com

You can find the agenda packet HERE and County Manager Pat Whitten’s summary HERE. You can find the Audio for the meeting HERE.

There were scant Staff and Board updates so I’ll just move to the meat of the meeting.

SIDENOTE- I don’t remember why this meeting was moved from Tuesday to Monday…except that it is a holiday week and because the process “lost” a step when Blockchains pulled out of the original deal which included the County’s floating a bond and the creation of the Special Assessment District. All of the agreements had to be redone and approved by the murder of lawyers involved.

They want to get this done by the end of the year and the next meeting is December 4^th when this whole deal will get approved…ostensibly.

But I digress early………

The meeting was kicked off by a new presentation about the new pipeline deal. I highly suggest that everyone who has been following along read that presentation which starts on page 6 of the agenda packet.

In a nutshell….same as the old deal but without the County being on the hook for the bond so there is no liability on the County’s part and no encumbrances on the properties of the companies.

Tax Increment means any and all taxes which are collected over and above the “baseline” of what we currently get from the Tax Increment Area. So the county and the state will still get 100% of what they are entitled to up to that “baseline” amount. The tax revenues that the companies get diverted back to them to pay for the pipeline will come from what is above that “baseline” amount.

Since there will be no interest payments ( due to no bond) the cost of the pipeline will go from about $60 million dollars to about $32.9 million dollars and the payment schedule is over about 20 years with the hopes of prepaying it all in 9 years if the expected increased tax revenues come from increased property assessments due to accelerated development.

All property tax except for School Operating and School Debt/Capital is subject to being diverted back to the companies thru the TIA over and above the current “ baseline” tax revenues collected, only 50% of the revenues from Modified Business Tax and Sales tax are eligible to be diverted back to the companies thru the TIA but remember that certain taxes are abated for some of these companies so 50% of already abated taxes isn’t a lot …..relatively speaking.

The “Flow of Funds” slide was and still is confusing…there are the terms “reimbursement”, “ further reimbursement”, “scheduled payment” and other movement of funds language that left me, at least, confused. When I asked about the terms I was told that the presenter “made them up” while trying to simplify the explanation. No sidenote needed on THIS one.

I also asked how it was that the V&T ¼ cent sales tax monies could be diverted from its original use since it was voted on by the Storey County voters on the 2010 ballot. I was told that the TIA and all of its rules were passed by legislative action and supersedes voter actions.

Lastly, the pipeline will still be owned by the TRI GID.

Sam Toll, Editor of The Storey Teller, got up to ask how the companies will get reimbursed and was told that they will pay the developer ( TRI, LLC) for the construction of the pipeline and then give that paid voucher to the county to get reimbursed. If they don’t pay the bill they don’t get the reimbursement from the diverted tax money in the TIA.

Sam also objected to the use of public funds to pay for the pipeline for some of the richest companies in the world. If they need this money, he said, then they have other problems.

And so ended the presentation.

The next agenda item was the first reading of the establishment of the TIA. During this agenda item, I got up to read a statement into the record which you can see at the end of this article. I had submitted all of the signatures that we received thru the community meetings in the Highlands and in Lockwood as well as during other times. 110 opposed the use of public funds for the pipeline, 10 were unsure and NONE were in favor.

The Commissioners passed the first reading of the TIA creation.

Caution….HUGE digression ahead:

SIDENOTE- I had heard that the reason that Blockchains really pulled out of the original plan was because they did not want their property to be encumbered by the bond terms since they plan to do things with and/or sell that property ( more on that at a future date) …..not because they were afraid of being called a corporate welfare recipient feeding at the public trough on money that would otherwise be used to help the countys citizens.

Onward….in looking at the revenue projections presented today I noticed that they seemed different from the last presentation in August so I compared them. Very interesting. First of all I see no disclaimer as to the accuracy or “promise” of the projections. Are these a guarantee?

Projections are really nothing more than wild ass guesses. A good projection is a wild ass guess backed by some intelligence , trends and key data points to mitigate the “guess”. The difference between just a guess and a good guess is the degree of swing between projection points and/or the actual data when it comes in. The swings between the August and November projections are fairly large, and in the negative, which means there were not good data sets available at that time or the picture has changed drastically or both… OR…..they just don’t really know and are making things up.

If Blockchains hadn’t pulled out in September forcing a redo of the deal and a relook at the projections the Commission would have made their decision on the August set of numbers….which we now know were off by at least 30%. Additionally, looking at the current projections if you look at the year over year taxes you’ll see that the rate of development/higher assessments is later in the November projection than in the August projections. Wonder why?

If the decision to give away our money is being made based on the expectation of higher future revenues then the Commission needs to look again, and again at the projections including doing some scenario planning. SCENARIO PLANNING! Just like real companies do!

The Commission likes to call this corporate welfare “an investment”.

You know where I stand on this…I say N.O. to any public money going to pay for this pipeline no matter how small….but now the data on which the “investment” decision is being made looks to be a bit screwy ……if I were thinking of investing in a company with these types of projection swings…I’d say N.O.

 

	August 2018 projections	November 2018 projections	Difference
Total taxes Due by 2028 WITH pipeline before taxes are diverted to reimburse the companies -2020 thru 2028	$150.1 Million	$98.3 Milliom	$51.8 million less than prior projection ~34% swing
Net Revenues after taxes are diverted to reimburse the companies	$126.8 Million	$70.0 Million	$56.8 Million less than prior projection ~44% swing
Total taxes due WITH OUT pipeline	$70.1 Million	$47.5 Million	$22.6 Million less than prior projection ~32% swing

But I have digressed beyond repair……..

Lastly, during public comment Joey Gilbert, Esq, lawyer to the Mustang Ranch got up to object to the denial of a work card to a working girl. Using lawyerly words like animus, tomfoolery, cruel and I can’t remember what else since I tuned out….he accused the Sheriff of being mean.

Sam Toll got up and once again noted that putting public comment at the end of the agenda AND now in the giving away of our tax revenues thru the TIA it sends the message that the constituency comes last in the minds of the Commission. He said, “ those chickens will come home to roost.”

……..and the meeting was over……………

 

STATEMENT READ INTO THE RECORD AT TODAYS MEETING: