11/13/12 Members of the Plymouth Common Council had a relatively short meeting Monday evening.
The Council approved a resolution in support of the coalition grant application with the EPA for a Brownfield assessment. The coalition has Plymouth as the lead with Marshall County and Bourbon with other two entities. If successful the grant could bring as much as $600,000 to the area to identify dozens of possible brownfield sites and then pinpoint a couple of dozen for potential clean up. Bruce Carter Associates is helping with the grant application at no charge in hopes that the grant is successful and then they would submit a bid for the assessment project.
City Council members also approved three resolutions for transfers of funds for the Law Department, City Lights and Power and the Cemetery.
The time consuming issue before the Council involved an issue with the 2006 Tax Abatement for Zentis Food Solution North America. The requested presented back then was for a tax abatement for a $34 million project that would take 5 years to complete and would include the hiring of 154 employees. Although it was a blind request since the company had not yet committed to Plymouth.
Kevin Chestnut, property tax consultant for Zentis appeared before the council Monday night and tried to explain the issue; although he was not involved with the original tax abatement application and neither is the current administration at the plant.
The Zentis project is now completed with a price tag of $38.8 million. Instead of hiring 154 employees the current staff is at 252 and they are in the hiring process again.
City Council members expressed their gratitude with Zentis’ decision to locate their first North American facility here in Plymouth. They were very supportive of the additional employees that were hired too.
Councilman Don Ecker did ask about procedures the company had in place to make sure the required paperwork would be filed.
Councilman Wayne Smith asked, “What do we need to do to move this forward?” He was told a public hearing would be necessary to amend or wave their non-compliance of the SB-1 (Statement of Benefits). The Council will conduct that public hearing during their November 26th meeting.
