EASTON, Pa.- It’s a no. Again.<\/p>\n
During its regular meeting on Thursday night, Northampton County Council voted down a TIF (tax increment financing) designation being sought by Skyline Investment Group for its overhaul of the former Dixie Cup factory in Wilson Borough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vote was 3-6, with Commissioners Ken Kraft, Kelly Keegan and Jeff Warren supporting the proposal, and Tom Giovanni, Jason Boulette, Theresa Fadem, Lori Vargo Heffner, David Holland and Nadeem Qayyum in opposition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It’s the second time council has nixed the\u00a020-year,\u00a0$26.4 million tax abatement proposal to support the redevelopment of the dilapidated old factory on S. 24th Street, which closed in 1983. Skyline is converting it into 405 apartments.<\/p>\n
Council initially said no to the TIF in November, but Skyline\u00a0Managing Partner Brian Bartee vowed to try again before a reconfigured county council; of the commissioners who voted no last year, only\u00a0Vargo Heffner and Giovanni are still on the panel.<\/p>\n
Bartee also upped the county contribution for affordable housing (in lieu of including such units in the building) from $1.3 million to $2 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the end result was the same, after a process that was extremely similar to last year: council heard impassioned public comment from those both for and against the plan spread across multiple nights, before offering their own opinions on the proposal.<\/p>\n
A TIF allows for future gains in real estate values to be used to pay for redevelopment costs.<\/p>\n
In simpler terms, the higher property taxes that would be levied against the refurbished property are phased in later, so the developer can use that deferred tax revenue upfront to pay off loans incurred in the redevelopment.<\/p>\n
“This is a tool,” Vargo Heffner said, of the TIF. “It’s not one that I think this council needs to use at this time.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Qayyum called the TIF a “giveaway” of taxpayer dollars that could be used to bolster the middle class. “For me, this project is of the rich, by the rich and for the rich,” he said.<\/p>\n
But Keegan pointed out that Skyline already has sunk tens of millions of dollars into the remediation of a brownfield site that has sat vacant for more than 40 years. “Nobody else came forward.\u00a0Mr. Bartee was the only one that stuck his neck out on the line,” she said.<\/p>\n
Both Wilson Borough council and Wilson Area School District previously approved the TIF.\u00a0The people on those boards “live in Wilson,” Keegan said. “They got elected by only people in Wilson. Wilson needs this.”<\/p>\n
At one point during county council’s lengthy meeting, there was some uncertainty about whether council would vote on the ordinance. It was revealed that the Northampton County Industrial Development Authority requested for the ordinance to be tabled. A reason was not provided.<\/p>\n
Warren made a motion to table the ordinance, but it failed, in a 4-5 vote.<\/p>\n
The issue came up again later in the meeting, but council again voted to plow ahead, which led to the denial of the TIF, prompting cheers and applause from members of the public who, more than an hour-and-a-half earlier, had implored them to turn it down.<\/p>\n
Before the vote, both Fadem and Holland, who joined council this year, spoke about the intense lobbying that went on behind the scenes in an effort to sway their votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“People are supposed to let us know, as your elected officials, what is it that you want us to do? How should we represent you?” Holland said. “But there have been some times when it’s been a little, I’ll just use the word unsettling, as far as some of the level of intensity.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa.- It’s a no. Again. During its regular meeting on Thursday night, Northampton County Council voted down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2313,153,155,154,63286,4731,45451,132,5463,5089,56305,1823,4554],"class_list":["post-186816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-affordable-housing","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-dixie-cup-factory","tag-northampton-county-council","tag-public-comment","tag-redevelopment","tag-skyline-investment-group","tag-tax-increment-financing","tag-tif","tag-vote","tag-wilson-borough"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}