Enough turbine money to go around
By RICK MORAIN
For The Jefferson Herald
The Greene County board of supervisors will be tapping less than half the projected tax revenue from 41 existing wind turbines in the northeast part of the county for tax increment financing to help the Greene County Community School District build a new regional academy.
The supervisors a few weeks ago approved using $5 million of TIF from the turbines’ forthcoming property taxes for the proposed regional career academy. The new academy is to be constructed adjacent to a proposed new high school building on U.S. Highway 30 in Jefferson.
If the bond issue is approved by district voters on April 3, the academy will be operated by Iowa Central Community College for interested high school juniors and seniors who want their high school courses to include advanced technical and skilled curricula that would be in line with occupations that area employers could use.
Students from Greene County and seven other neighboring districts could take courses there.
Iowa law provides that wind turbines are to be valued for tax purposes at a maximum of 30 percent of their net acquisition cost after ramping up to that point over a seven-year period. Turbines are a unique type of property that can be used by a county for special projects.
Over the 20 years of the bond, the property tax revenue from the wind turbines will be more than twice as much as the $5 million targeted for the regional academy.
In addition, the county’s property tax total from turbines is expected to grow substantially when 83 additional turbines are erected in Greene County later this year in the same general area as the current 41 turbines.
The supervisors have retained the firm of Ahlers and Cooney to handle the creation of an urban revitalization plan for the area, within which the TIF funds can be spent. The county expects that area to include the turbine field, the new academy site on Highway 30 and the road connection between the two sites.
The county expects the urban revitalization plan to be completed by the end of this year, and hopes to have it in hand before then.
Because funds for construction of the regional academy could be needed before the full TIF tax revenues will be available, the supervisors will need to borrow funds to be repaid from TIF revenues when they become available. One of the possible sources for funding would be Greene County banks.
Allocation of the TIF funds for the new regional academy, of course, depends on approval of the April 3 bond issue election.
The proposed bond issue resolution, which includes construction of a new high school, the new regional academy and remodeling of the present high school as the new home of middle school classes, is for $21.48 million.
The entire project cost is $35.48 million.
The $14 million gap between the $21.48 million bonded amount and the entire $35.48 million project would be met by the $5 million from county TIF revenues, $4.5 million from the Grow Greene County Gaming Corp. and $4.5 million from already-authorized school tax funds such as the physical plant and equipment levy and the local option school sales tax.
Private contributions, like the $100,000 pledged by Jefferson residents Dick and Delores Finch, will be part of the $35.48 million project. The citizens’ school project committee is also raising other private money for the project.
Absentee voting in the bond issue election began Monday.
Approval by 60 percent of the voters in the bond issue election is necessary for the project to proceed.
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