AUBURN — After listening to arguments from a taxpayer against a $11 million tax abatement for Heidtman Steel Products Inc., the DeKalb County Council Tuesday unanimously approved the tax-incentive package.
Richard Waring of rural Auburn argued that businesses are benefiting from the recent elimination of inventory tax as well as from reassessment.
“Abatements should cease,” Waring said, as a result of reassessment and the shift of more of the tax burden to individual property owners, especially farmers.
Heidtman requested a five-year abatement on a $5.6 million investment in new machinery and a 10-year abatement on $5.4 million in a new 100,000-square-foot building. The expansion is expected to create 50 new, high-paying jobs, the council heard.
According to Greg Goad, a Heidtman vice president, the order has been placed for the new equipment and delivery is expected in May or June of next year. His company wants to build the new building to house existing steel processing equipment. The new machinery would be installed in the existing plant building.
Goad said the company has yet to decide if the new plant will be built in Butler or in Cleveland. A steel mill in Cleveland makes wider steel coils than does Steel Dynamics Inc. of rural Butler, the primary supplier for the Butler Heidtman operation.
According to Goad, the decision on where to locate the plant is dependent upon decisions by both the DeKalb County Council and by government agencies in Ohio.
County attorney Derald Kruse noted Waring’s arguments came from a valid perspective if only “the playing field were level.” He said the fact that Indiana is competing with other states where the playing field is not even makes it difficult for the county to switch policy and reject the abatement process.
Attorney Jim McCanna, who will replace Kruse later this month and who is attorney for the county Redevelopment Commission, noted that taxes are not eliminated by abatements, only deferred.
“The decision you need to make must be based upon whether the benefits to the county exceeds the saving to the company” seeking the abatement, he counseled.
Council President Robert Wilder said that increased income of employees and their taxes must be factored in.
“When looking at studies of wages earned before SDI came to DeKalb County and since their arrival, it is quite clear that family income has grown considerably,” Wilder pointed out. He added that increased income doesn’t stop with just the job created by an industry, but rolls over into the income of others.
