Minutes Enterprise Zone 4 5 06
ENTERPRISE ZONE COMMISSION
City of Dubuque, Iowa
MINUTES
DATE:
April 5, 2006
TIME:
4:00 P.M.
PLACE:
Conference Room B, City Hall
50 West 13th Street, Dubuque, Iowa 52001
"....
COMMISSION:
Present: Dave Baker, Doug Buswell, Doug Stillings, Rick Stein,
Kelley Deutmeyer and Dan LoBianco
Absent: Dan White, Mike Van Milligen, and Eileen LeMay
STAFF:
David Heiar, Pam Myhre
CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order at 4:00 p.m. Staff certified that the meeting was being
held in compliance with the Iowa Open Meetings Law.
MINUTES
Stillings moved and Buswell seconded a motion to approve the minutes of June 27,
2005. Motion passed unanimously.
APPLICATIONS
The McGraw-Hili Companies. Inc.
Staff reviewed the application checklist with Commissioners. Bill Baum, Greater
Dubuque Development, provided an overview of the project to expand their operations
in the city. He noted that EZ benefits would provide a refund of sales tax on
construction materials for the $32 million project and the company would receive a tax
credit on Iowa income taxes owed. He stated that the application met the state's
minimum EZ program requirements and clarified that separate decisions are made on
different state financial assistance programs such as CEBA (which the City Council
approved on April 3, 2006) and the EZ application before the Commission.
Laurie Simmons was introduced as the representative from the company. She offered
to answer any questions the Commission might have.
Buswell asked about the land discount and the possibility of recapture of any gain if the
company sold the property in the relatively near future. The questions was a general
policy question and not specific to the application.
Baker asked about the benefits and was satisfied with the answer regarding the
company's plans being monetarily equivalent to the 80% of medical and dental
requirements. He also asked about the City Council actions at their April 3rd meeting.
The discussion continued later in the meeting during Items from Commission.
The Chair asked for public comments. Bud Isenhart and his daughter Barbara were in
attendance. Mr. Isenhart voiced his approval of the project stating that he thought the
location of the project in the Port would energize the redevelopment of the riverfront.
He discussed his concerns with TIF financing generally and asked about the parking
arrangement. Heiar and Baum explained the proposed concept for the parking lot
development (City-owned, developer improved) and shared usage.
Motion by Baker, second by Buswell, to authorize the resolution approving the
application. The following vote was taken:
Aye:
Nay:
Abstain:
Baker, Buswell, Deutmeyer, LoBianco, Stein and Stillings
None
ITEMS FROM COMMISSION
Commissioners discussed the reappointment of the 3 at-large members. It was
determined that there was not a quorum of the representative members in attendance
to elect the at-large members. An electronic polling of the six representative members
will be pursued.
Deutmeyer and LoBianco asked for an electronic version of the EZ district map.
Following up on Baker's concerns voiced above, Commissioners discussed their
general desire to be informed of any application's submission to the City Council for
action for other State incentives. There was some confusion over the City Council's
April 3rd approval of an application for state financial assistance; however, that
application did not include the Enterprise Zone incentives.
ADJOURNMENT
Meeting adjourned at 4:50 p.m.
Approved
Chairperson
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