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The Jefferson County Commission today approved an economic development incentive package that will produce a Publix-anchored retail development in Kimberly.
Three commissioners — Lashunda Scales, Joe Knight and Sheila Tyson — voted in favor of rebating a 1% sales tax to Blackwater Real Estate Kimberly, LLC. The tax will be capped at $1 million or a 5-year term, whichever is less.
Commission President Jimmie Stephens, who questioned the means of funding the incentive package, abstained. Commissioner Mike Bolin was absent.
“I am concerned about some of the wording of the document,” the commission president said. “I am for the project, 110 percent. But I’m not comfortable with our agreement as written. We’ll let that stand at that.”
In Tuesday’s committee meeting, Stephens was taken aback when the project presentation included use of the county’s sales tax. Portions of that tax revenue are dedicated for special uses, such as schools and indigent care. Stephens said rebating that money struck him as inappropriate given that it would cut the amount of current tax funds that would go to those obligated purposes.
Stephens and Scales met with county staffers after the committee meeting Tuesday, seeking an explanation of the tax rebate. County Attorney Theo Lawson explained that the tax rebate will be performance based, depending on the amount of tax the development generates.
“Amendment 772 authorizes public dollars to be given to private projects, which of course has a benefit to the public,” the county attorney said. “There has to be an amount associated with how much is going to be given. In this instance, the amount to be given to the business is going to be determined by the amount of sales tax that they would generate. Plain and simple.”
County Economic Development Adviser Jeff Traywick said again Thursday that the project will create 67 jobs with an average wage of $16.64 an hour. The return on investment is projected at about $1.8 million in general fund revenue and about $3.8 million in educational revenue over a 10-year period.
“We don’t do (incentive packages to aid) retail very often because a lot of the times retail goes where retail needs to go and oftentimes doesn’t need the assistance of the public to get the deal done,” Traywick said. “What we look for are projects that need some level of assistance in order to move forward and has some level of transformative impact on the county.
“We don’t do it often, but there are a couple of projects that we’ve done it on in the past few years,” he said. “In this case, this project does face some adverse conditions with the site that lead to increased costs, but it also puts a grocery store — and a good quality one — in an area that does not have them right now. So it tackles the food desert issue for us.”
