By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — The Kosciusko County Council has turned down requests by Louis Dreyfus Co. for two tax abatements totaling $33 million.

The council made the vote at its regular meeting Thursday, Nov. 12, at the Kosciusko County Justice Building.

It was 5-2, with Sue Ann Mitchell, Mike Long, Kimberly Cates, Jon Garber and Ernie Wiggins voting to deny the requests and Joni Truex and Doug Heinisch being for it.

Members cited various reasons for denying the requests. Mitchell pointed out that Louis Dreyfus had been late on paying its taxes in 2018 and 2019 and questioned whether they could therefore be responsible with the abatements.

Wiggins said he doesn’t like the fact that the property and real estate that the abatements would cover only allow the company to create seven more jobs.

“The way I understand abatements, if I read Indiana code correctly, is it’s a tool to entice new business into your county and I think that we’ve gotten away from that to some extent and allowed expansions,” Long said.

He said that the fact the tax abatements would cover a company located in a tax increment financing district also creates a problem.

“This TIF district was formed because there were infrastructure needs, there were needs to improvements to entice Dreyfus to come to our area,” Long said. “So to abate the very taxes that would help fund this TIF when we have 800S and 900S that are in need of some attention and we have an opportunity through Community Crossroads to double those tax dollars, but in order to do that we have to have the tax dollars upfront to be able to match that 50%.”

Two people spoke during the public hearing for the tax abatements before the council voted.

Miechi Petro said she wasn’t necessarily opposed to the abatements for Louis Dreyfus, but questioned the process of abatements in general. She said she was concerned about local schools not getting funds that would have been generated if a business paid all of its taxes without an abatement.

She also questioned what parameters the council sets for granting abatements.

Truex explained the council is currently working with legal counsel on creating a rubric or checklist by which they can judge whether to grant an abatement to a company.

Mitchell explained to Petro that school districts do lose out on some funds when a company gets a tax abatement, but that a company does have to pay some taxes during the course of an abatement.

Travis McConnell also spoke with a similar concern about the council having specific guidelines for whether or not it grants abatements.

In other business, the council also:

• Approved a request from Health Department Administrator Bob Weaver to seek grant funds to help with COVID-19 testing in the county.
• Heard from Sheriff Kyle Dukes that the sheriff’s office, in conjunction with other county departments, is having a public auction soon.

Items available at the auction will include vehicles and tools among other things. The auction was to be partly in person, but with Gov. Eric Holcomb’s new COVID-19 restrictions, the county has moved it all online.

• Approved allowing Dukes to fund the salary for the county work release director out of commissary money.
• Approved a request for Jail Commander Shane Coney to apply for a coronavirus relief grant of more than $140,000.

Funds would be used to buy laptops, gas masks, temperature kiosk scanners and devices to put out ultraviolet light to kill germs in the jail.

• Approved allowing Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Shane Bucher to apply for various grants related to patrols.