Memo    

TO:                 Mike Wildgen, City Manager

CC:                 Dave Corliss, Assistant City Manager/Director of Legal Services

FROM:           Frank S. Reeb, Administrative Services Director/City Clerk

DATE:            April 28, 2004

RE:                 2003 Tax Abatement Report

___________________________________________________________________________________

2003 Tax Abatement Report

Attached is the 2003 Tax Abatement Report.  As noted in the attached minutes from the April 15, 2004 Public Incentive Review Committee (PIRC) meeting, PIRC unanimously recommended forwarding this report to the City Commission, subject to the changes noted in the PIRC minutes.  The changes made in this final draft of the report compared to the draft reviewed by PIRC are:

• added information in the paragraph before Table 1 explaining which tax abatement policy applies to which abatement;
• added information in Tables 2 and 6 for Prosoco, Inc. (the information was provided on the day of the PIRC meeting);
• updated Table 3 SOC specific wage information for Microtech jobs 41-4011, and 51-2022 (originally listed as 43-9011);
• revised Table 6 information for Allen Press percentage of non local sales information from 75% to 99% based on an email from Allen Press
• added Job Training information for Allen Press on Table 7 based on an email from Allen Press

Accompanying Documents

Two other documents accompany the 2003 Tax Abatement Report.  First, Kirk McClure, a PIRC member provided a trend analysis with tables summarizing investment performance (for years 2001-2003), full time jobs (for years 2001-2003) and wage performance (for years 2002-2003).  I’ve compared the numbers in his analysis to the numbers reported in the annual tax abatement reports for the years 2001-2003 and they are the same. 

Kirk’s trend analysis notes “unknown” or “not reported” information several times in the tables.  I’ve reviewed the information in the City’s tax abatement files and the only additional information I could find involves the API Foils investment information.  The reason no real property information for API Foils was included in Table 1 of the 2003 Abatement Report in the “actual investment” column was because the original 63.896% real property tax abatement was granted to Douglas County Development, Inc. (DCDI) which leased the property to Astor Universal and then subsequently sold the property to API Foils in 1999.  Our records do not include the purchase price API Foils paid to DCDI for that property.  In 2000, the City approved, and the Board of Tax Appeals ordered, the transfer of the abatement from DCDI to API Foils. 

The second document accompanying the Tax Abatement Report is a “Tax Abatement Re-analysis” from the University of Kansas Policy and Research Institute re-evaluating the tax abatement model results using information from the 2003 Tax Abatement Report rather than the information submitted on the abatement application.

If you have any questions, about the 2003 Tax Abatement Report, please let me know.