Sign up for email newsletters
Sign up for email newsletters
Logan County residents and businesses, especially ag-related businesses, stand to benefit from an economic incentive program the county’s Board of Commissioners proposed Tuesday morning.
The incentive would be to essentially forgive building permit fees on the first $250,000 of any new construction project, and no fees at all for any ag-based new construction.
The new program is the brainchild of Board Chairman Byron Pelton and came out of discussions about a request to forgive building permit fees and sales and use taxes on materials to rebuild CHS, Inc.’s New Haven grain handling facility. The facility was virtually destroyed by a derecho wind that caused widespread damage in southern Logan County several years ago.
CHS Operations Manager Bob Schaefer said the project ultimately will cost between $6 million and $7 million, but the facility is important to grain producers in that area. Weather damage at the time caused insurance claims to spike, draining the pool of money to cover them.
The commissioners were initially agreeable to the request but later learned that County Attorney Alan Samber had some reservations. Samber had doubts that the county could legally forgive fees and taxes for just one entity without setting a precedence that could damage the county financially.
After a series of conversations and emails, Pelton came up with the idea to forgive all or portions of building permit fees, saying it was yet another way the county can show its support for small business and agriculture.
“Agriculture and commerce are why Logan County exists,” Pelton said. “It was small businesses, farmers and ranchers who built these towns and cities, and we are happy to again make policy that makes agriculture and business just a little bit easier to do.”
Commissioner Joe McBride pointed out that in 2018 the commissioners pushed through a measure that tripled the business personal property tax exemption limit of $7,400 to $23,000 for Logan County business owners.
Logan County Financial Officer Deb Unrein calculated the county would lose about $80,000 per year in fees, but Commissioner Jane Bauder pointed out that, with increased material costs, the county could recoup some of that in sales and use tax.
Under the new policy, anyone doing any non-agricultural building or remodeling that requires a building permit would have the fees forgiven on the first $250,000 of construction costs. Fees would be owed on that part of construction costs above the $250,000 limit.
For agriculture-related structures, however, all building fees would be forgiven.
The commissioners directed Samber to work on a resolution to that effect, to be in place for their next meeting on July 5.
In other business Tuesday, Logan County Fair Manager Guy McEndaffer reported that Caliche High School students will again act as ticket takers and ushers for ticketed events during the 2022 fair. There had previously been some concerns that volunteers wouldn’t be available, so the county offered the temporary, part-time positions to the public at $15 an hour. He said he later learned that Caliche’s desire to do those jobs had been lost in a communications breakdown.
Still, McEndaffer said, the issue has demonstrated that the Fair Board needs to re-think what it offers to “volunteer” groups for handling various tasks during the fair, and that those will be examined in the fall when the board writes its budget for the 2023 fair.
During the commissioners’ business meeting, the board:
Sign up for email newsletters
We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.