Union County officials said Jerome Township either has a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how certain tax incentives function or are attempting “to mislead the public on these matters.”
The comments came in response to some of the township trustees outlining a series of accusations toward the county at an August meeting of the board.
County Administrator Bill Narducci said statements made regarding the county’s last-minute changes to economic development agreements, not meeting with residents and of backing Jerome into a corner range from questionable to inaccurate.
He said much of the tension between the two entities centers on how development will be paid for.
“With much needed infrastructure improvements on our existing roadways, it’s heartbreaking to see these funds go to a single developer towards things like their tap fees, legal and engineering fees, and to reimburse themselves for the land acquisition in which their development sits,” Narducci said. “The documentation shows $14 million being utilized for this purpose at Jerome Grand and another $17 million is being projected on the multi-family development within the Kile-Segner TIF (Tax Incrementing Financing agreement area). That’s over $30 million dollars that could be utilized to help solve these problems. This is not a staffing issue as the township’s legal counsel states; this is a funding issue and it’s abhorrent that the township is allowing this to occur.”
He said that “is not how TIF funds should be utilized” and that those types of developments “have the most intense impact on the very levied services (schools, fire, law enforcement, traffic, Board of Developmental Disabilities, Mental Health and Recovery Board, etc.) that are having funds redirected to the TIF.”
Changes to the agreement
Davis said the county made changes to the Cooperative Economic Development Agreement (CEDA) at the March meeting between the two groups. Narducci said that’s inaccurate and that the meeting between them “did not discuss changes to the CEDA at all.”
“Actually, the CEDA terms were agreed to by all six elected officials (three commissioners and three trustees) in a joint executive session held at our office on Wednesday, March 15,” he said. “The over two-hour discussion between (Davis) and myself centered on the county’s concerns regarding how the township has utilized TIF funds in the past and how we can put guardrails on the Kile-Segner 150 acre TIF to focus using these funds on true, regional public infrastructure rather than on SREG’s (Schottenstein Real Estate Group’s) internal infrastructure.”
He said at the end of that same day, he received a phone call from Davis after she consulted with the township’s legal counsel.
“(I was) informed that (counsel) did not believe the developer would agree to the terms that we discussed,” Narducci said. “This further concerned the county as to who is dictating terms on what should have been a township-controlled TIF and where those funds would be going.”
No meeting with residents
Narducci said Davis’s accusation that he refused to meet with property owners in Jerome is “patently false.”
“The CEDA encompasses a 14,000-acre area and we didn’t feel it was appropriate to allow the three property owners that stand to benefit from the sale and development of their property to take precedence over all of the other residents and business within the CEDA district,” he said. “I offered to meet with those property owners outside of the CEDA discussions…Because talks broke down shortly thereafter, that property owner meeting did not occur.”
He added the county didn’t feel it was appropriate to have “those few property owners in the room” during broader negotiations that would affect others.
CRA expansion
As tensions increased, the county expanded its Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) in the township in early August, which Davis said would “gut” Jerome’s TIFs.
“Whether it is a county TIF, a township TIF or a joint TIF, the accusation that we would gut the TIF simply does not make sense,” he said. “The vast majority of roadways impacted through development in Jerome Township are county-maintained roadways. Why would we hamstring ourselves on the funding source that allows us to perform these projects?”
He said offering abatements and incentives to certain developments are “necessary to compete in the region to attract quality businesses.”
“We backed you in a corner”
Narducci said that comment is “absolutely false.”
“After two years of negotiations, we finally thought we had an agreement with the township on a CEDA that gives no jurisdiction majority over another,” he said. “However, after the late March meeting with (Davis) and myself, it was very clear to us that once again the township was changing terms that would ultimately open the door for these TIF funds to be used to benefit a specific development’s internal infrastructure and not the region.”
Narducci said the commissioners felt that they had “no other option” than to notice the school districts of a TIF with the hope that it would get the township back to the table.
While the two entities have communicated since then, so far, no agreements have been made.