Proposed Tax Incremental Financing for New Hotel Site +

Last week, the City Council received a request to hold special City Council and Finance Committee meetings on Wednesday, November 5, 2014. ('Special' because the Council would normally meet on 11/18/14 this month and the Finance Committee, later in the month.) The meetings are scheduled for 7:00 p.m. (City Council) and 7:30 p.m. (Finance Committee) at City Hall.

The special meeting was called so that the Council and Finance Committee would be able to hold readings of several important measures before the regular 11/18/14 meeting and then hold final votes on them on 11/18/14, for quick turnaround. The driver of this accelerated schedule is a proposed Tax Incremental Financing package for a hotel developer, to develop the site at 284 Elm Street for a 92-room, 54,000 square feet hotel. Any Tax Incremental Financing package must also be reviewed and approved by the Commonwealth and the committee that reviews these proposals only meets quarterly; this schedule is designed to get this to the committee before the end of 2014.

284 Elm Street Property

What is Tax Incremental Financing (TIF)? It is an economic development tool made available through the Commonwealth through which a locality such as Amesbury provides an economic incentive for a developer in the form of waived property taxes at a negotiated level for a negotiated period of time. Amesbury approved guidelines for using TIF as a development tool earlier this year.

The way it works is that the City can elect to waive property taxes collected on future increases in property value based on the desired development. For example, if a property generates $10,000 in property taxes in its current state but would generate $20,000 a year in taxes in its developed state, the City can waive some or all of that new $10,000/year in anticipated taxes, for a set period of time.

In this case, the Mayor is requesting that the City waive:

• 75% of the new (incremental) tax revenue for the first 5 years 
• 35% of the new tax revenue for the next 5 years

 

 In this particular case, the value of this TIF incentive (that is, the waived property taxes) is $802,500.

The rationale for offering the incentive in the first place (under the guidelines that we approved earlier this year) is that the proposed site itself offers constraints that add cost to any developer and make the project prohibitively expensive without the TIF incentive. The developer is required to use the tax savings essentially as self-financing for part of the project (proposed at around $10 million total). Here are the numbers (as legibly as I could cut/paste them from the proposal):

You can read the entire TIF package HERE. This is Amesbury's first TIF and likely out only 'bite' at creating an incentive for this property, so it is important for us to get it right. The City is 'investing' over $800K in waived taxes but some short-term and a good bit of long-term gain in new tax revenue from the property.

The OTHER significant item in front of the City Council at this special meeting on 11/5/14 is the authorization for the City of Amesbury to purchase 116 Whitehall Road for $400,000. View the property HERE.  This is land currently zoned for 61a agricultural use and as such, the City has the 'right of first refusal' when the property is up for sale. This request from Mayor Gray is to exercise that right and purchase the land, presumably as open space. As one can see from a map view of the property, this open space links the north side of Woodsom Farm over the ridge down to Whitehall Road, offering the potential to expand the size of and access to the Woodsom Farm property.

You can read this request HERE.

I encourage anyone interested in either of these items to attend tomorrow's 11/5/14 City Council and Finance Committee meetings.

Waste Management Landfill and Potential Large Solar Array

I was at a Planning Board meeting tonight with my colleague Anne Ferguson (At-Large). Though we were there for another issue, we were both interested in hearing a 'Pre-Hearing Conference' presentation by a company working with Waste Management to propose the development of a large solar array for the capped landfill off of South Hunt Road.

Under the Patrick administration, the Commonwealth has promoted a number of means for promoting large and small scale solar energy production. The project discussed tonight would come under an initiative to develop solar arrays on capped and closed landfills, such as this one. You can read more about this HERE.

Here is a photo of the proposed solar array site:

Photo of Map from 10/27/14 Planning Board Meeting

(I apologize for the quality of the image; it is a phone photo of a large handout.)(Does this location look familiar?)

The road across the top is South Hunt Road. The development in the lower right is part of Bartlett's Reach, off of Pleasant Valley Road. And the development on the right side of the image is Merrimack Landing. The capped landfill is the large tan blob in the middle of the image and the gray/blue area inside that is the proposed footprint of the solar array, taking up a substantial part of the landfill.

The capped landfill itself has a bit of elevation to it and the array would take advantage of the elevation to capture solar energy. You can see the same location HERE (Google Earth) and HERE (Open Street Map), for good perspective.

This is all exciting news. This would enable Waste Management to put this inactive landfill property into a productive use, it would add to the Commonwealth's overall production of renewable energy (and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for power generation), and it would add taxable value to the property (boosting Amesbury's non-residential tax base). There are, as you would imagine with a closed waste site, a number of hoops to jump through, both state and local. But MA DEP has permitted over 40 solar array projects on landfills to date, so has developed capacity to review and approve such projects. If this comes to fruition, it will be a strong complement to Amesbury's recent achievements as a Green Community.

Amesbury Sports Park - Update

Folks have been wondering what is next in the Amesbury Sports Park story, ever since the City of Amesbury's Conservation Agent John Lopez exercised his authority under the Commonwealth's Wetlands Protections Act by putting a 'Cease and Desist' order on Amesbury Land Associates (the folks who own and run the Sports Park) on August 29, 2014.

I can't say much about the condition of the business or the oft-asked question: what's happening with the October 2014 Brewfest that was scheduled to take place there.  I can say that the City of Amesbury's actions were limited to stopping the Sports Park from the running of so-called OCR (Obstacle Course Race) and any other events through wetland and wetland buffer zones in the City of Amesbury.  This effectively meant the cancellation of several OCR events planned for this year.  Such events do NOT represent the entirety of the Sports Park's business.  The City's action only was against any such race on an affected property and not against all Sports Park business operations.

Tonight (Monday 9/15/14), the Amesbury Conservation Commission took two important actions against Amesbury Land Associates.

First, it formally 'ratified' the 8;29 Cease & Desist Order (HERE).  The language of the order was as follows:

This Amended Enforcement Order is being issued as a follow up to the original Order issued on 8/29/2014 for unauthorized activities within Bordering Vegetated Wetlands (BVW), Bank and the 100' Buffer Zone without permits from Amesbury Conservation Commission (ACC), which consisted of the creation of an approximate 4-mile hiking trail of various widths through wetland resource areas and Buffer Zone that significantly altered wetland vegetation, and exposed and destabilized soils; excavation of a 30' x 10' x 5’ trench (approximate) and a smaller, partially excavated trench within BVW, and the placement of tree limbs across intermittent streams and BVW for the purpose of supporting foot traffic. These violations were made pursuant to the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act (MGL Chapter 131, s. 40) and its regulations (310 CMR 10.00), as well as the City of Amesbury Wetlands Ordinance and its regulations. The majority of violations took place on city-owned and private property without permission. Therefore, you are hereby ordered to cease and desist all activities within jurisdictional wetland resource areas and Buffer Zone. See additional directives in Attachment to Amended Enforcement Order pertaining to restoration of activities and deadline dates.

 Second, it approved an enforcement amendment (HERE) to this Order that ordered Amesbury Land Associates to:

• Hire a wetlands scientist to conduct a damage survey on all affected public and private properties, using a geo-map of the August 9 Spartan Race course.
• Based on the survey and assessment, develop a mitigation plan for presentation to the Con Comm at their November 2014 meeting.  Specifically, "[t]hese observations shall be detailed in a report and be photo-documented. This report must include proposed restoration activities in an effort to restore the resource areas to its original condition."

 This is all, as it should be, limited to damage from the Spartan Race held on August 8 and 9.  To give you a sense of how extensive the Sports Park's practice of mis-using these properties has been, here's a run-down of the OCR events hosted by the Sports Park just in 2014 and 2013:

2013 SuperHero Scramble - Happily scrambling through some very wet wetland (Source: http://relentlessforwardcommotion.com/2013/06/2013-new-england-superhero-scramble-charger-review-recap/)

5/4/13 - Renegade Playground

2013 SuperHero Scramble - Stream(?) Crossing

6/8/13 - Superhero Challenge

6/29/13 - New England Civilian Military Combine (CMC)

7/13/13 - Dirty Girl Mud Run

8/10-11/13- Spartan Race

5/17/14 - MUD Match 2014

5/31/14 - Warrior Dash

6/7/14 - Superhero Scramble

6/21/13 - New England Civilian Military Combine (CMC)

7/26/14 - Dirty Dash

8/9-10/14 - Spartan Race

9/6/14 - Muddrella Race (cancelled)

10/11/14 - OutFit Challenge (cancelled)

10/18/14 - Zombie Run (cancelled)

5 last year, 9 this year, all with approximately the same course.

With the Conservation Commission addressing the wetlands violations (and the private landowners sorting out any trespassing violations), my concerns turn towards the fact that these races were held with such impunity.  The City does have something of an event permission process in place, but it is mainly geared towards the recreational use of Town Parks for things such as sports leagues and competitions.  It is not geared towards events held on private property or outside of Town Parks.  Whatever process we have in place currently, it clearly is not adequate, since it has allowed tens of thousands to race through Town Conservation land, capped landfill, and Superfund properties for some time without proper controls.  The Sports Park has at least coordinated with our Police Department on traffic plans related to these events, so there was some City awareness but that didn't translate into additional oversight.  And a resident of Amesbury had brought these very same land use concerns to the City after the May 2014 Warrior Dash and before the August Spartan Race, without result.  So, somehow, we've been missing the link from the thousands coming into Town for these events and these land use problems.

Last week, I requested from the Mayor copies of any paperwork submitted by the Sports Park for any of the events listed above.  I have not yet heard back regarding what the City may or may not have on file. UPDATE 9/16/14: I heard back from the Mayor's office and an ongoing search has not turned up paperwork for 2013 and 2014 OCR events hosted by the Sports Park.

To address the problem of having only modest or little oversight of large scale events in Amesbury, I've drafted and submitted a Special Event Permit Process ordinance, for first reading at the September City Council meeting, with Councilors Lavoie and Ferguson as co-sponsors.  It sets broad standards in place for what kinds of events will require a special permit and the conditions which any permit application must meet before being approved.  You can read the proposed ordinance HERE. 

I'm looking forward to getting input from the City, my fellow Councilors, and from the business community about how we can do a better job of overseeing these and other public events.