By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com
JEFFERSON — Ashtabula County officials on Thursday conducted annual tax-incentive reviews of companies that have received abatements in exchange for job-creating investment in the county.
Review committee members are Ashtabula County Administrator Janet Discher, Commissioner Peggy Carlo, Auditor Roger Corlett, Ashtabula County Joint Vocational School Superintendent Jerome Brockway and Growth Partnership for Ashtabula County Executive Director Joseph Mayernick. In addition, affected school districts, villages, townships and cities can send representatives to the hearings.
Discher said 16 abatements involving 15 companies were reviewed, as well as a Community Reinvestment Act deal in Orwell.
The annual review is a condition of abatement and is used as an opportunity to confirm that the companies are living up to the terms of their agreements. The committee votes after each presentation as to whether to continue the abatement.
None of the abatements reviewed Thursday received a nay vote from the committee.
“Nobody is in jeopardy of losing it,” Discher said.
One company will be removed, however, because its abatement applies only to personal property. Indeed, Discher said that with the state phasing out personal property taxes and replacing them with a commercial activity tax, abatement is not the big economic development tool it was a decade ago. Personal property abatement facilitated investment in machinery or inventory subject to taxes.
Abatement is still in place for real-estate improvements, however.
Discher said that, in general, company representatives reported that 2009 was a challenging year for their operations. Some were down slightly, others were stagnant, and a few found new markets that helped them remain steady or grow.
Some employers fell short of the job numbers required by the agreements, but Discher said the committee takes into account the difficult economy when voting on continuing the abatement.
“They are already being pummeled by the economy, and we’re not going to double-whammy that,” Discher said.
She said one company, Veitsch-Radex America in Saybrook, formerly Foseco, has tripled its business as a result of being acquired. The acquisition of Wayne Dalton also bodes well for expansion, according the company officials who attended the reviews. King Luminaire in Jefferson also reported expanding into a new line of LED lighting.
