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Hazelwood School District Has Concerns About Tax Abatement Plan for Ford Site
All seven members of the HSD Board of Education attended a Hazelwood City Council public hearing Wednesday night held to express concerns regarding the proposed tax abatement plan for the former Ford assembly site.
The statement released from the board follows:
“One of the most important services offered by local government is a free quality public education to all residents. Good, financially stable public schools are the true hearts of Missouri’s cities, towns, and neighborhoods. People choose to move to-or leave-cities because of their schools.
That’s why the Hazelwood School District, which includes the City of Hazelwood and several other adjacent municipalities, has been watching plans for the former Ford site so closely. It is the single most important commercial and industrial site in the Hazelwood School District and one of the most important development sites in the State of Missouri. Its redevelopment as a new taxpaying corporate citizen is an opportunity to protect residents from the skyrocketing costs of local government, without cutting vital services.
The Hazelwood School District supports-wholeheartedly-the redevelopment of the Ford Site. Ford’s departure affected many of our community’s institutions, but none of them as strongly or immediately as it did the Hazelwood School District, whose residents already pay one of the highest rates of taxes in the region. We are delighted that one developer is already interested in the site.
“We are concerned, however, with a proposal by an out-of-town developer that would abate most taxes on the site for 25 years. For the first 10 years of the proposal, the abated taxes and the payments in lieu of taxes would equal less than 14 percent of what the school district received from Ford in 2006. That would place a huge burden on the school district’s residents.
” So, we are asking three questions of Mayor Carr and the City of Hazelwood: 1.) What is the rationale for a 25-year abatement, rather than an abatement of shorter duration? 2.) Under what provision of the Urban Redevelopment statute is any abatement at all being proposed? And, 3.) Why aren’t the payments in lieu of taxes high enough to address the School District’s financial realities?
” Twenty-five years doesn’t seem like much when you read it on paper. But, it is. To a school district (or to a parent), 25 years is a child starting school in kindergarten and graduating from high school, going off to college, getting married, having children, and that child’s own children enrolling in the school district. It is a teacher’s entire career. It is the service life of a school building.
“Before we mortgage two full generations of public school children to this plan, it is imperative that the City of Hazelwood make a good, informed decision that considers all the residents of the Hazelwood School District. Thank you for your consideration.”
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