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County designates economic reinvestment zone

Tue, 04/23/2019 - 11:15 am
County Commissioners act following public hearing on solar farm
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    Young County Resident G.L. McDowell (front) and Advising Attorney to the Young County Commissioner’s Court Jay Cantrell (back) stand and speak during the public hearing about declaring 1,436.2 acres of land as an economic reinvestment zone on Monday. (Leader photo by Nathan Lawson)
news@grahamleader.com

The Young County Commissioner’s Court held a public hearing on Monday and took action declaring land as an economic reinvestment zone for a solar farm, but remains in negations about a tax abatement for the solar company Belltown Power Texas.

Before the public hearing, the court approved the re-adoption of a resolution including guidelines and criteria to become eligible to participate in tax abatement.

“Chapter 312 of the Texas Tax Code requires any taxing unit which participates in any kind of abatement, every two years to adopt a tax abatement guidelines in criteria,” advising attorney Jay Cantrell said. “Back in 2010, this court adopted tax abatement guidelines and criteria (…) and since there has been a request for a tax abatement, we thought it be advisable to renew these.”

The attorney also spoke on what designating an area as reinvestment zone means for the county.

“Like with the guidelines, this does not mean that the commissioners are required to approve a tax abatement agreement,” Cantrell said. “In fact, as of today negations are still ongoing.”

Young County resident G.L. McDowell started the public hearing and asked the commissioners if the reinvestment zone would allow for Belltown to put in a wind farm on the land. The commissioners said there has been no wind farm proposal and the designations are good for a period of five years.

For the rest of the story see the Wednesday, April 24 edition of The Graham Leader.