As homeowners have felt the pain of rising property taxes from the wild housing market in recent years, the St. Joseph County Council is considering a bill to update how it gives property tax breaks to businesses. The council plans to vote on the bill Wednesday evening.
The council’s four Democrats, joined by Republican President Dan Schaetzle, are calling their bill the “Community First Investment Ordinance.”
It will require companies receiving abatements to use local subcontractors for at least half a project’s costs, says Democrat Bryan Tanner, the council’s president pro temp.
“If a company is going to come and make a fairly significant investment, we need to ensure that the community is receiving other benefits as a measure of that incentive to the developer or the investor," Tanner says.
But Republican Council Member Amy Drake says applicants don’t always know which contractors they’ll end up using.
“The other issue is when you go ahead and list the contractors, somebody could go in there and screen for union-only companies," Drake says. "I don’t know that everybody would do that but it’s an option and we don’t want to discriminate against non-union businesses either.”
Drake also thinks the bill doesn’t do enough to help small businesses.
“When they talk about who they’re going to give abatements to, it’s people who are doing big building projects, big warehouse projects, big residential community projects, and so it’s not really aimed at the small business," Drake says. "In fact when a small business reads through this, they’ll probably be like, this doesn’t apply to me.”
But Tanner strongly refutes that.
“It expands who could utilize a tax abatement, it lowers the threshold for the size of business that could potentially benefit from it, and it simplifies what has been a complex and potentially confusing process that required outside consultation to navigate it," Tanner says. "So I absolutely refute that this is not small business-friendly. If anything it’s the friendliest it’s ever been and potentially ever could be because it specifically enhances their ability to take advantage of it.”
