By Pauline Masson –
Franklin County commissioners want to take taxes that two proposed data centers would pay to the Meramec Valley R-III School District and the Pacific Fire Districts and distribute those funds to all school districts and fire districts in the county.
The Commission has no regulatory authority to do this, but the fact that they would announce it publicly captured the attention of Hometown Matters and seasoned political observers.
In a front page article in the May 28-June 3 issue of the Missourian newspaper, First District Commissioner Paul Overschmidt may have revealed that the Commission plans to override the Franklin County Planning and Zoning Commission recommendation and approve the Beltline, Crooked Creek data center planned for the McLaren farm near Pacific.
The article addressed tax revenue from both the Diamond Farms and Crooked Creek data centers.
This is a mind-blowing proposition, considering that school district and fire district taxes are not regulated by the County. But Mr. Overschmidt revealed that the Commissioners are trying to find a way to take those taxes and give them to other districts.
“We’re trying to get something worked out where we can spread that (tax revenue) evenly across the county to all school districts, fire districts and ambulance districts,” Mr. Overschmidt is quoted as saying.
Former County Commissioner Ed Hillhouse, who is a candidate to regain that position, said the idea offers a new set of problems for the County and for MVR-III, where he is a former superintendent.
“If you do that you open a can of worms,” Mr. Hillhouse said. “Ï’ve never heard of it happening before.”
He said the proposal flies in the face of how taxing district funds have been handled in the county – or anywhere.
“The City of Washington is very economically astute. They go out after things,” he said. “When they bring in a major company that benefits the Washington School District. I’ve never heard anyone say we should share that tax revenue with all the school districts in county.”
“When Wentzville got the GM plant, the school taxes went to Wentzville school district and just the Wentzville school district.”
“This idea is sort of the County deciding where a school districts taxes would go,” Mr. Hillhouse said. “They’re talking about taking taxes from one political entity and giving those taxes to someone else – not Meramec Valley. They have no authority to do that.”
Hillhouse also noted that it’s time to update the County Commission. Even though it is a three person commission, it only takes two votes to pass anything.
“I have maintained all along that two people control the county. It only takes two votes for anything the county wants to do, ”he said. “We are past the time when two votes control what happens in our county.”
“Even two votes have no authority over school districts,” he added.
“With this proposal of taking Meramec Valley R-III money they are saying, ‘We have decided we know better in fairness and we are going to take what is owed to you and we’re going to divide it up.’ ” he said.
And they may be able to do it.
“I am not an attorney,” he said. “But there might be a scheme where they could abate the taxes and make a deal with the developer to pay funds in lieu of to different entities, ” he said. “Taxes should go to whatever entity the project resides in.”
“What they are saying is, ‘We didn’t realize one district would get the taxes and we want to change rules on that,” Mr. Hillhouse said.
“One of reasons I’m running is that it is time to have a full time person there who tries to stay on top of things.”
Former Pacific Mayor Herb Adams, one of the longest serving elected officials in the County, also voiced astonishment that the County announced that they are “working,” to taking taxes from the Pacific area and give them to other areas of the county.
He said the issue is complicated and participants need to weigh their options.
”If the County tries to take taxes from the Meramec Valley School District, this has to be challenged in court. The school district, and the community, cannot just take this.” the former mayor said. “The taxing entities should ask the court not only to protect school district taxes but to halt progress on the data centers until all the questions are answered.”
The school district could also make a public challenge to the commission and any political entity that might benefit from Pacific’s windfall.
They should tell the commission and other taxing entities, if they want to benefit from this phenomena that the data centers offer, they should advertise to bring a data center to their door and benefit from the giant windfall of taxes, Mr. Adams said.
The MVR-III school district officials have also voiced concern. The district posted a statement on its Facebook page that after reading the article in the Missourian, district officials were paying attention to the proposal of the county diverting district tax funds to other districts.
The statement noted that taking local MVR-III tax revenue generated by two proposed data centers and distributing it evenly throughout the entire county would include all school districts, ambulance districts, and fire districts in the communities of Washington, Union, St. Clair, Franklin County R-II, Lonedell, Spring Bluff, Strain-Japan, New Haven, and Sullivan
What the possible windfall of taxes – millions of dollars over time – would mean to the school district is support for educational programs, critical facility improvements, expanded student opportunities in the MVR-III district and potentially lower taxes.
“In addition, the potential increase in local MVR-III tax revenue from the data centers would allow the District to roll back its tax levy, providing savings to local MVR-III taxpayers,” the statement said. “The tax dollars from these data centers should therefore stay exclusively in the MVR-III community that is being asked to bear this burden, and possibly provide much-needed tax relief to our local taxpayers.”
Stay tuned.
It seems to me that people in authority somehow are dumb enough to believe that “ we know what’s best” no matter what the statues say, or the legislature, or the local government or anyone else”. Absolute power corrupts absolutely!