[0:01] This meeting is now being live streamed.

[0:25] Please sit, can you hear us? I can. Can the bill, can you hear us? I sure can, Michael. Great, good morning. Chairman, you have audio connection and video connection and live cameras behind you. Okay, we're going to open a special meeting today.

[0:49] First thing on the agenda is we have the draft minutes from October 15th meeting and

[0:56] everybody's ready to look them over to any questions.

[1:00] If not, I don't need a motion in a second.

[1:02] I'll make a motion.

[1:03] Second.

[1:04] Voice in favor.

[1:06] So move.

[1:08] We're going to do next.

[1:09] And this is over here.

[1:10] We're going to get right into the conference center.

[1:14] And Mike's going to go through.

[1:16] Good morning.

[1:20] The board members will remember that in February, the county asked us to receive the transfer

[1:29] of a 3.625 acre parcel of land in the Commerce Park for sale to SAT, SAAD development

[1:39] work who were interested and were put together proposals for a distribution center and apparently

[1:51] how it was working is they put two or three sites together and other developers put

[1:56] sites together and then the company that was interested in the distribution center made a selection

[2:01] and they selected a site down in Dutches County on Route 84 as opposed to the site in the

[2:10] Commerce Park. As a result they terminated the contract and on the terms we kept $7,500

[2:19] of earnest money realizing that that site had future potential. We passed around the

[2:31] survey map, but we went ahead and got a survey done and we got an appraisal done.

[2:40] And the reason we ordered the appraisal was because at the time we felt that the developer

[2:47] had who was from downtown offered a price far in excess of the market value.

[2:56] and we have had the county has had an offer for the site at 80,000 and as you recall the previous

[3:07] proposed offer was at 120,000. So we have done an appraisal. Your appraisal is at $90,000.

[3:15] We presented this to the Board of Supervisors Economic Development Committee last Monday. They have

[3:23] approved the transfer of the property to CEDC for sale at 90,000 to the both the person

[3:33] who's offered 80 if they're willing to pay that. And the full board of supervisors will

[3:38] review it at their meeting on next Wednesday, week from tomorrow. And at that point, we would

[3:49] to ask this board as December meeting to consider whether or not to fill it for the appraised

[3:55] value to the company that is both purchasing.

[4:02] It is another site, a company in the commerce part.

[4:05] They are going to retain 25 jobs by moving into a new facility that they would build on this

[4:12] site and how it does.

[4:16] Again, we want to bring this to your attention and to the attention of the public through this process so that and I have the appraisal which I'll circulate. I can email copies.

[4:29] We'll post a copy on the on the website and then assuming the county approves the transfer of the property to us, we would proceed with a sale.

[4:39] And I have notified the authority budget office of a potential sale as they require a 90 day notice before we transfer any real property.

[4:51] Any questions?

[4:59] It's not chairman.

[5:01] The have been in touch with Hudson River Valley holding.

[5:05] That's the entity that Paul Harpiss and Max.

[5:10] It's a side company I've never pronounced as last week.

[5:13] So it's a savage own together.

[5:19] And we had given them an extension to build during COVID.

[5:25] When they purchased the property, they had a penalty mortgage,

[5:28] which required them to construct a facility on that site within two years.

[5:34] We did give them an extension and they have until next June.

[5:37] I offered them the opportunity to talk to this developer or this company as well as others

[5:44] who might have interest if they're not in a position to build on themselves.

[5:51] We have a couple of conversations, but nothing definitive to report.

[5:57] Limbs machinery, you'll see when you drive by, they have their steel building up.

[6:01] It's not secured yet, so I don't believe they've done anything inside.

[6:06] And that's, you know, right on the, on the corner and at that point there is some land that the county has in the back adjacent to the fire training facility where they're thinking of putting a new

[6:28] that the county operates, the county is considering using some of their ARPA funds for that project, but it would be a three or four million dollar project, and they would need other grant funding for that project as well.

[6:43] other than that, Harpiss himself has a lot that the CEDC transferred to him. It has a similar penalty mortgage and CEDC had given him the same extension that you provided.

[7:01] Dutz and River Valley holding during COVID so they had a chance to develop that property without having to pay the penalty.

[7:11] We do have, I think, the tent company is built a new facility, a building on their site

[7:16] when you see that, and the real question long-term is there are two or three sites that are

[7:24] owned by people who have not developed them, but they did pay the penalty mortgage.

[7:31] So we're working with those people to see how long do they want to hold their site.

[7:35] And my thought is in most instances, they paid 60 to 75 grand for those properties all

[7:45] in after the penalty.

[7:47] And if they can see that they're not going to use it, they're now up to market.

[7:52] There was a while where the initial payment plus the penalty was above market.

[7:57] But now that the market price for these types of land with water sewer,

[8:02] Yes, electric and broadband at the same location, perhaps someone who was holding it and who no longer has a purpose for it, but didn't want to sell it at a loss.

[8:11] I open it up to another opportunity.

[8:14] My quick question, how many parcels are still left?

[8:19] Two or three in a corner's part that week.

[8:21] Yeah.

[8:21] And two or three.

[8:22] And that raises the question.

[8:24] You know, that was a great plan when it was first initiated.

[8:31] It's got to be 15 or 20 or four years ago.

[8:34] So there have been some inquiries.

[8:37] Is the IDA or the county?

[8:40] Going to identify another parcel of land.

[8:44] in the county where they could possibly create shuttle ready sites. I think some of that will depend on

[8:53] you know the sewer line is not yet operational on 66 but there are issues that if you're not

[9:02] in the commerce park and want to connect to that sewer line you're going to have to get approval

[9:07] from the green port town board because the green port town board included that in the agreement

[9:13] to accept the effluent from this Commerce Park at their wastewater facility when the

[9:21] sewer line was built. There's additional discussion of development

[9:27] at the corner of 9866 and we also, so I do think, you know, the broader issue that we need to

[9:39] to begin to think about is with only a couple of lots left in the Commerge Park where some

[9:44] people are still holding them for either their own use or speculation, we're really for

[9:50] all practical purposes out of sites in the Commerge Park. Those two or three parcel owners

[9:57] are not really motivated to do much but perhaps with the market value catching up to what they

[10:05] they have in it, they might be interested in someone.

[10:08] We have no recourse, I know.

[10:10] No, I think in the future, if you offered it

[10:14] at a discounted price to encourage

[10:17] or incentivize someone to build,

[10:19] the penalty mortgage might be that you take it back,

[10:21] not that you might give them three or four years to do it,

[10:25] but instead of putting it in the situation of people

[10:29] ending up with good intentions,

[10:31] but at the end, just speculating on land.

[10:35] You know, you might give them a $40,000 on a $90,000 piece and if they don't build on it in three years with a one-year extension for demonstrated purpose, you would take the plan back as opposed to just making the pace up.

[10:52] Well, I was just thinking that's about it, and that's part of the question I wanted to ask.

[10:59] Without COVID, we would have collected the money, and have turned it over to County.

[11:09] So, and then we would not have been getting interested on it because we do aren't interested

[11:16] on the land, and they have been paying, they did get a six-month deferral during COVID.

[11:21] but they both all these lots are that we still manage

[11:25] for the county or paying.

[11:29] Any questions on the Commerce Center?

[11:35] We have not received, but anticipate an IDA application

[11:42] from 178 Healing Associates, LLC.

[11:46] That is a development project in the town of Greenport.

[11:52] They are in the process of making application to their to the planning board and having discussions with the assessor.

[12:01] And so I had some indication that they might have had their application ready, but it'll be ready for your meeting in December.

[12:12] And basically that's all the information I have on that at this time.

[12:17] The next item is Clock Estates.

[12:22] As you know, we closed the Clock Estate IDA financing three or four weeks ago.

[12:30] At that time, we issued a sales tax exemption letter to the company.

[12:37] Hudson Russ on our behalf filed that notice that's required of that action

[12:45] to the state tax department and we have a meeting

[12:49] at one o'clock today with Mr. Fischkopf

[12:52] from Plata State's to discuss the reporting requirements

[12:57] related to as an IDEA.

[13:03] Lisa and I have been discussing the enhanced reporting

[13:07] requirements that the state is as begun to require

[13:13] with respect to IDA projects. We have identified a company in Rochester who

[13:24] services about 20 IDAs in connection with doing this work and they also provide

[13:33] tracking if there is a project labor agreement and on January 1st there will

[13:43] be a new law going into effect that will require any project that's over $5 million and that

[13:51] receives more than 30% benefit from government funding sources, whether federal low income,

[14:01] federal or state low income housing tax credits, historic tax credits, IBA benefits, they will

[14:08] be required to pay prevailing wage rates for the construction of their project, and they'll

[14:15] be required to report monthly. In addition, there are several downstate IDAs that also require

[14:24] certain employment for construction criteria, whether it be that the worker lives in a certain

[14:32] geographic area whether they have other relevant determined characteristics whether they

[14:42] be low income or diversity as well as requiring developers to take a wage higher than the

[14:52] the state minimum wage.

[14:55] The requirements to monitor that are far beyond our capacity with

[15:00] The number of projects we have, you're the New York City, IBA, the Westchester County, IBA, you can afford to have two or three staff people to do this monitoring and tracking. I have spoken with the director of the Ulster County, IBA, which is one of the Montgomery County, the Montgomery town, IBA and Orange County, and they use this consulting firm and have had some success. If you look on the back of the page that I sent,

[15:28] and I will get this to you Bill and Nina just came in this morning.

[15:35] For the monthly review and reporting and inspection related to tracking the prevailing

[15:44] wage issues for a project in the five to twenty five million dollar range, which is basically

[15:51] the ones that we would be involved in.

[15:54] And as you can see, there's a one-time $2,100 fee, there's a monthly fee of $17.55, and

[16:04] then there's a closeout fee.

[16:08] Right now, we don't have any projects in that category, and traditionally, any legal

[16:14] engineering survey, appraisal expense for an IDA project is passed on to the developer.

[16:22] For this point, our thought would be to get approval of up to $2,500 for the IDA.

[16:35] It's self-to-retain this company for guidance and advice.

[16:39] They have a fee schedule from $90 to $200 depending on the level of professional that we would

[16:47] be working with to help guide us.

[16:52] And then to the extent that we would retain them to do the sales tax tracking, we would pass that cost on to develop.

[17:05] What's that?

[17:06] Because it's a one-time fee.

[17:07] It's a monthly fee of $1,100.

[17:10] Based on a project of $5,000,000 to $25,000.

[17:16] Now what they have, and you said if we don't have any projects right now, but if we, if we did, it would be very fairly expensive.

[17:25] The $2,100 to

[17:31] set the program up. It would be $17, $55 monthly, and it would be $800. So it would be close to $25,000.

[17:42] it was a 12 to 18 month product, which in and of itself, even if you divide by two and a half

[17:54] thinking that the professional consulting firm has a two and a half multiple, we mean we'd

[18:02] be needed $10,000 staff time to do that work in-house. And it's not something we do regularly or that we

[18:10] have the volume to do to make it worth trying to set that program up in house. And you would have

[18:21] the developer pay for it anyway.

[18:25] Again, we don't have, we do have Mr. Fish Drop is coming in,

[18:30] calling in today on clock because he wants to know how we're going to handle the sales tax because

[18:35] he's starting to use the sales tax certificate. And so at the end of November, I don't have to look

[18:41] you know how many days after the end of the month you have to file with the tax

[18:46] department whether it's monthly, quarterly or whatever. You know I do think

[18:52] we need to at least approve the engagement of this firm with the

[18:58] understanding that to the extent that they're doing work on a specific project

[19:02] that that would be built separately to develop.

[19:06] What's going to go right through the two of us about that?

[19:10] So the clock is going to be how much all together?

[19:12] Well, it'd be $1,100 a month until they finish, so no.

[19:17] How many million is their project?

[19:19] Their million is $10 million.

[19:20] Their overall project is $10 million.

[19:24] We have found that there are very few IDA projects under $5 million because the added expense

[19:31] of the reporting, the added expense of the legal and IDA fees don't make it worthwhile, so.

[19:40] And so their clock will be looking at say another 25,000?

[19:46] No, well, I mean, I would think that clock can be done in six months and so, you know, it would be in

[19:55] In their case, I would guess it would be under 10.

[19:58] But if you're looking at, if you were looking at a,

[20:06] so you were looking at, in the city,

[20:09] if you looked at the two Galvan housing projects

[20:11] or 25 million dollar, one is 20 million and one is 15,

[20:16] I don't think you can build 150 apartments in 12 to 14 months

[20:24] depending on when you can get started weather-wise.

[20:27] So, you know, on a larger project that takes more than 12 months, you're looking at another added expense, which just makes it harder to justify going through the idea.

[20:39] Yeah. Like, what's the difference between the, there's, what's that there's two one-time fees, and then also two monthly fees.

[20:46] I'm looking at the top of the review and reporting inspection fee is 17.55 plus the one down below the sales tax credits.

[20:52] Right. It's a one-on-one.

[20:53] Well, if you were doing a, if you had to do a project that required prevailing weight

[21:05] rate documentation and you had a $5 million contract with a contractor and you divide

[21:13] that by a hundred people and you've got six months, yeah, you'd have all of that.

[21:21] Again, we

[21:27] have had some experience here with getting receipts from businesses and organizations

[21:35] that received project cuts in tourism grant awards and they come in with a box and I'm

[21:45] I'm sure it's like, you know, they come in with their, like, going out of your account

[21:51] and at the end of the year, they just give you this box and tell you, here's how we

[21:55] see, sort it out.

[21:56] And, you know, I just, again, I think when we see how this is done, we might determine

[22:05] that it's something we could do in-house, but the compliance and the, the, the, the regulates

[22:14] already risked to the IDA and CDC to be doing this to NOVO and not doing it right and having

[22:23] ourselves in the paper or having ourselves fined or I think the first project, we got

[22:30] to try this and see what's involved and you know if we do are able to pass it on to the developer,

[22:38] I don't like that. I mean, it's just another birth of costs. But when you look at these projects,

[22:44] some of them are getting three and four million dollars of benefits when you have the pilot payment.

[22:50] And you know, I do think that we would at least need to pay them to get this set up and to figure

[22:56] out how it works. Yeah, I think it's going to be a deterrent to projects again. It's another cost.

[23:07] But I don't think it's helpful to the IDA or to the developer or to see if you see as

[23:12] your administrator to try to do this in Ovo.

[23:20] No, I would say no.

[23:21] Too much work to do.

[23:23] Well, it's not, you know, we don't have the volume of it, so you can't develop the expertise.

[23:28] And you don't want to go out of the doctor that it only does one surgery a year.

[23:32] And then you're also dealing with a problem there.

[23:39] You've got to go to do this, you've got to be

[23:44] the developer, the chest to give you that information.

[23:47] It's not what we're going to have to go look at the physical.

[23:50] No, they're required.

[23:51] I mean, that's part of the built into the boiler plate

[23:53] of the IDA agreements, whether they

[23:55] read that or not to get that self-tax benefit.

[24:00] If what will happen is if they don't provide it,

[24:03] the state tax department will come and assess

[24:12] We're trying to encourage businesses, we're trying to help businesses.

[24:23] We did reduce it to CEDC side of the fee we would have been entitled to take on clock

[24:31] and Hudson Valley Creamery for their office of community renewal grant just

[24:37] because you know through COVID that's surprising these companies were able to

[24:42] stay on track and keep their development project viable.

[24:48] But I would like to

[24:50] at least have a $2,500 approval for us to be able because so will be cost setting

[24:55] this up and working with this consulting firm that initially we'll be able to

[25:00] passed on through the open.

[25:02] Just hit our budget.

[25:05] Well, you know, we don't have the budget,

[25:07] because it's not the end of the month.

[25:09] We do have the budget for next year,

[25:11] but, you know, I expect that we will have a $20 million

[25:16] project that will close next year.

[25:20] And that'll be a $200,000 fee.

[25:23] We have the balance of clock speed.

[25:26] We charge them a proportionate percentage.

[25:29] which based on the issuance of the sales tax certificate

[25:33] as opposed to the full fee,

[25:36] the balance will be due when they close on their financing.

[25:40] And so, you know, we'll have, you know,

[25:44] it's been five years since we did the WIC Hotel

[25:47] and six or seven since we did the solar project

[25:52] and received the fee for the DNJ warehouse

[25:55] that didn't go through.

[25:57] So, I do think that we're optimistic about the future projects, but again, I think we put a place saver,

[26:10] what you'll see in the budget for the, that we don't have in here, but the budget we approved at the last meeting for the APO,

[26:18] I think we put a place saver of a $50,000 fee in because you don't know.

[26:21] And so the budget is a budget and you know $50,000 fee would have been a $15 million project.

[26:30] And you know, we knew that we were going to have that with the balance of the clock.

[26:37] So we need a promotion to be brought, but would be, hey, I should go and on an hourly rate

[26:49] And I'll report each month this to how much we spent, but I don't expect that I would expect that would take us for a year, you know, it's not looking to

[26:59] Yeah, but just to up to 25 hundred dollars

[27:03] 25

[27:05] Council

[27:08] Order

[27:08] Okay, so

[27:11] We need a motion

[27:14] I have second

[27:20] And the second, okay, roll those in favor.

[27:23] Hi.

[27:24] Oh, it's so carried.

[27:28] We didn't vote, but we can do it.

[27:30] I don't think we've voted on that till end of the county votes.

[27:34] What if the county decides not to transfer the land to us?

[27:37] Oh, same.

[27:38] Yeah.

[27:39] And I think it also gives anyone that wants to ask questions

[27:44] or have any comment or discussion about it, both from the board

[27:49] of the public an opportunity to weigh in, but we will have that on the agenda for the

[27:59] December meeting.

[28:01] The one thing about this state law that's going into effect, it will put a damper on

[28:08] IDA projects, although several contractors have told me that if you're building a $20 million

[28:13] dollar project, you're already paying for valiant wage or you're not getting workers.

[28:18] And so a qualified worker is a decent amount of term, but at the same time, there was

[28:30] supposed to be a board set up to create regulations and guidance on this because it says if your

[28:39] your construction project is more of that.

[28:42] Does your construction project mean just the cost of construction?

[28:46] Does it mean the total project cost, including your land?

[28:50] Does it include your interest during construction

[28:53] and your architectural and engineering work?

[28:57] And hopefully it includes everything

[29:01] because then the 30% test, if it's only on construction,

[29:05] They're going to be projects that will trigger the prevailing wage law requirements simply

[29:15] because of the pilot agreement, the sales tax exemption and the mortgage tax exemptions.

[29:21] Well, alone if they have historic tax credits or low income housing tax credits and it's

[29:28] It's also not clear whether it's 30% government incentives, do they include only state incentives

[29:37] or do they include state and federal incentives?

[29:40] So the way the legislation was drafted, you know, there's an industry-wide discussion

[29:48] of what is, because no one really knows what it means.

[29:54] I don't know that we have any public members but

[30:02] I would like to welcome our new council, Andy Howard, and we want to thank again to Goderman

[30:12] for his many years of service and he's working with us on transition and helping us wrap things

[30:19] up that we're very grateful to him for that courtesy and accommodation.

[30:24] Any other questions?

[30:26] Any other questions?

[30:28] For most, you need a motion.

[30:30] The motion is removed.

[30:31] Second?

[30:32] Second.

[30:33] Without objection to order.

[30:35] Awesome.

[30:38] Big care everybody.

[30:40] Thank you everyone.

[30:41] Thank you.

[30:42] Thank you.

[30:47] That's the way to turn this thing off to this district.

[30:50] Shut it off.

[30:51] I thought you were late.

[30:52] Thank you.

[30:53] You're in there.

[30:56] I'll find it.

[30:58] I'll find it.

Columbia County IDA

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