Maplewood TC Releases Financial Analysis of Proposed PO PILOT

alias said:

I have not researched nor refuted your financial assumptions.

I'm simply pointing out that:
33,085/9000 = 4 +/- (the position you do not support)
380,000/9000 = 40 +/- (the position you do support)

I'm not going to be swayed by $36/ year impact per household.

Agreed i am not swayed either.

The town rents out a lot of buildings, using management entities to do so...DeHart, Burgdorff, WC, etc. so what's the big deal?

Take the Civic House, for example...it is rented for $1200 a month to the YMCA ...all utilities paid by the town too!

Great deal if you can get it!

LOST said:

I think with the "middle man" the Township had no management responsibility.

We would, however, under that proposed scenario, with the costs of that responsibility not baked in to the savings numbers proffered it seems. Which is just one large issue to consider with the financial analysis on the misguided landlord deal.

Numbers are approx...of course needs to be "baked" in. There must be real numbers out there....what does it cost to mange the WC, the Burgdorf etc...and those are with ongoing rolling lease deals..this woudl be once in a while deal..not much ongoing work for management....what's the reality? I'd bet it's not much.

ice said:

...As far as PILOTS go, this isn't the worst one I've seen, It's only 5 years, land taxes are paid fully from year one, and it only gives a 100% abatement on improvement taxes in years 1 and 2. After that, improvement taxes are phesed in at 20% per year, reaching 100% in year 7. ...

If this is such prime property why is any abatement necessary?

^^^this

lord_pabulum said:

ice said:

...As far as PILOTS go, this isn't the worst one I've seen, It's only 5 years, land taxes are paid fully from year one, and it only gives a 100% abatement on improvement taxes in years 1 and 2. After that, improvement taxes are phesed in at 20% per year, reaching 100% in year 7. ...

If this is such prime property why is any abatement necessary?

+1

I certainly was not defending the use of a PILOT in this or any particular case. I do not care for the impact that PILOTs have on our school finances.

I merely pointed out that this particular PILOT is not as unfavorable as others that sometimes run 10-30 years and that not all PILOTs are created equal. The terms of the PILOT matter, and folks should be aware of the details.

While I would prefer that it could be done without another PILOT, I still favor development that does not include keeping the existing structure.

ice said:

I certainly was not defending the use of a PILOT in this or any particular case. I do not care for the impact that PILOTs have on our school finances.

I merely pointed out that this particular PILOT is not as unfavorable as others that sometimes run 10-30 years and that not all PILOTs are created equal. The terms of the PILOT matter, and folks should be aware of the details.

This is correct. Also, in a five year PILOT the county, school district, and municipality all lose tax revenue in equal proportions, so the the school district will be getting some revenue from the improvement even in the PILOT's first few years. Also, right now the school district gets nothing in land taxes because the land is owned by Maplewood Township. Once the land is transferred the school district begins to get a few thousand dollars a year.

A PILOT may not be justified at this prime location, but this is not as bad for the school district as some other deals that have been made in the last few years.

The county gets paid on a PILOT. Suspect it will be more than a few thousand to the schools, and likely more than enough to cover any incremental increase in student costs if there even are any. Regardless, I do understand and appreciate your point.

This is a quote from the petition site linked in the other recent PO thread. It just goes to show the extent to which the OhNo60 crowd is willing to misrepresent facts or to simply make stuff up to bolster their case.

"Did you know that the money collected via a PILOT (see video below) does NOT go to Board of Ed as our property taxes do? This development will increase our school population (23 apartments = ? kids) in the Marshall/Jefferson zone with NO additional funds allocated to the district for another five years!"

JBennet knows our school finances better than just about anyone. I trust his facts. I trust almost nothing coming from the OhNo60 folks anymore. How many people were fooled into signing that petition based on the above-quoted misinformation? I won't call it a lie because the person who wrote it probably just doesn't have a clue. Lots of that going on at the bottom end of the red balloon strings. But enough is enough.

Fearmongering at its finest. So much for integrity, but then again many of us opposing these tactics from the start have come to expect nothing less. It's really the main reason why I even post on the topic.

Ice as I understand it 5% of Pilots go to the county and the rest to the municipality. Nothing to the school district

scottgreenstone said:

Ice as I understand it 5% of Pilots go to the county and the rest to the municipality. Nothing to the school district

According to JBennett, 5 year PILOTs are different from the longer ones. Knowing who he is and how deeply he cares about ensuring the schools are adequately financed, he is a source I trust.

Even if that were not true, the petition site says the school district will receive NO funds from the development for 5 years, which is simply false. Property taxes, including the school portion, start to phase in at year 3. So it's wrong no matter what. It would be nice to see the petition site updated to contain accurate info, but I don't expect it.

In any event, even if the PILOT angle doesn't work out for the OhNo60 crowd, they'll stretch really hard to find some other objections. Maybe now we'll see some photos of an endangered species supposedly living on the site? Perhaps taken by the mysterious person who is going to offer $1.8mm for the building? I'd love to have David Attenborough come to the library and attest that he thinks the habitat of the Mid-Century Modern Skink should be protected.

The bit about short term PILOTs being different from long-term ones comes from this (extremely informative) 2010 NJ Comptroller's Report on tax abatements.

For both types of abatements [long term and short term], municipalities are able to abate portions of property taxes that otherwise would be paid to the municipality as well as to other entities such as counties and school districts. These other entities, however, are not afforded a statutory role in the designation of redevelopment areas, the approval of redevelopers, the selection of projects, the decision to award an abatement, or the formation of the financial agreement. In the case of short-term abatements, the tax loss resulting from the abatement agreement is proportional across the municipal, county, and school district levels. In the case of long-term abatements, the tax losses fall more dramatically on counties and schools. Specifically, under the long-term abatement statute, the county receives 5% of the PILOT (a percentage that yields substantially less than the ordinary tax structure) and the local school district does not receive any portion of the PILOT.

http://www.state.nj.us/comptroller/news/docs/tax_abatement_report.pdf

By the way, I do not know the most about the SOMSD budget, not by a long shot. More senior board members know much more than I do and the business office staff knows the most of all.

Fair enough - I was unaware that the shorter pilots were different from that aspect, and I agree with you the Mr Bennett knows his stuff.

ctrzaska said:

Fearmongering at its finest. So much for integrity, but then again many of us opposing these tactics from the start have come to expect nothing less. It's really the main reason why I even post on the topic.

it's appalling. apparently as of last weekend, the people at the table in the village were still telling people that a 5 story building is proposed to go up on the site.

why can't they stick to the truth?

Truth hurts. As do ethics, apparently. Ends justify the means, and all that? Either way it's rather pathetic to see the glaring absence of self-respect evident in the levels some will sink to in order to further a cause.

Pathetic.

I hope someone speaks up at the TC meeting and points out all the misinformation on the petition.

It's really a shame. That petition might have some influence if it was true.

I'm most interested in their claims that someone would pay $1.8MM for the building. is there really someone out there waiting in the wings to buy the site? and if so, why won't that person come forward. I can only conclude that either they're blowing smoke and there is no person willing to come forward or if there is, that revealing the person's identity will be problematic in some way for them.

If someone is going to come forward, now is the time. What would they be waiting for?

If the town is willing to sell it for $600,000 as the oh no's claim why would anyone offer three times that.

I believe OhNo arrived at $600k by using PARCC math.

So how come there is no one with a counter-petition?

LOST said:

So how come there is no one with a counter-petition?

why would someone start a petition to allow the process to play out with the TC, developer and planning board?

I guess you are correct. If the TC begins to backtrack then would be the time.

The TC could put out a flyer pointing out the actual facts and the misinformation by the anti crowd.

LOST said:

I guess you are correct. If the TC begins to backtrack then would be the time.

The TC could put out a flyer pointing out the actual facts and the misinformation by the anti crowd.

Just how far do you go in responding and then legitimizing their misinformation?

sarahzm said:

If the town is willing to sell it for $600,000 as the oh no's claim why would anyone offer three times that.

Exactly.
Does anyone actually knows how much the town is selling the PO to JMF Properties? I thought it was 1.25M before 200K credit for demolition and environmental clean up.

By that logic, anyone that would propose more than 1.05M to buy the PO without demolition and Pilot would be competitive with the current proposal. Does that make sense?