The Fall River Tiff Board convened on August 3rd, 2022. The meeting began with a roll call, open meeting law statement, and the Pledge of Allegiance. The board unanimously approved the May 3rd minutes. The primary discussion and decision involved a proposed 12-year amendment to a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) agreement for Blount Fine Foods and Blount Realty, located at 630 Currant Road. Ken Fiola and Todd Blount, President and co-owner of Blount Seafood, presented the amendment, which supports a $65 million, 39,000 square foot expansion to add a fifth chiller. This expansion is projected to create 70 new full-time jobs within seven years, with salaries ranging from $15-23 per hour for entry-level positions and $50,000-$100,000 annually for management roles. The amendment maintains a 60% yearly tax exemption, consistent with their original February 25th, 2015 agreement. The board approved the amendment by a 5-0 roll call vote, with three members absent. The second item was a discussion regarding a Tax Increment Exemption (TIE) agreement for Hanover Properties concerning the Lincoln School, originally dated April 2019. Ken Fiola explained that the city sold the Lincoln School for $5,000 in 2015-2016, and the original TIE offered an 80% tax savings for the first five years and 20% for the subsequent five years, commencing upon a certificate of occupancy. There is currently no active TIE on the property. The former owner is expected to rescind the existing TIE to allow the new owner, High Development Real Estate, to seek a new TIE under similar terms. The city is anticipated to receive over $350,000 from the sale to the new owner. Board member Frank Marcioni raised concerns about the initial low sale price and the absence of reversion clauses in the original agreement. No vote was taken on this item, which is expected to be revisited in 4-6 weeks.
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like to call to order um tiff board meeting august 3rd um i guess i'll call the roll i'm here sean kadeem here richie gonzalez yeah
0:22frank marcioni yep matt thomas okay to the open meeting law any person to make an audio or video recording of this public meeting and may transmit through any media attendees are therefore advised that such recordings and transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived and are deemed acknowledged and permissible um salute the flight i pledge allegiance to the flag of the
1:02united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice i can't believe we have any citizen's input i'll look for a motion and a second to approve the may third minutes second second any discussion all in favor all right all right opposed unanimous um tonight i mean this morning we're going to talk about a proposed amendment
1:35to the tax increment financing agreement buy in between clout seafood and realty in the city of fall river dated february 25th um uh mr fiola i guess you're going to explain it to us yes uh thank you and uh good morning i appreciate everyone getting out early to address this uh matter of importance that's becoming that's coming before the tiff boy uh what you have this morning before you is a proposed amendment um
2:05between blunt fine foods and blunt realty in the city of fall river pertaining to an original tiff agreement dated february 25th 2015.
2:17the reason for the amendment to the existing tiff is the fact that uh fine foods is planning to uh expand once again um at this current at its location at 630 current road in fall river this new expansion will consist of 39 000 square feet and it's also going to uh in house and enclose a chiller that's um most important to the overall manufacturing process uh joining me this morning is todd
2:54blount who's the president and co-owner of blount seafood and i'm happy to always see todd todd and i go way back to probably 2002 when um seafoods actually purchased the building at its current at its current road facility the building was much smaller then and actually was coming over with approximately 75 jobs at that time i'm happy to report that right now seafood fine foods has more than 1 000 employees so
3:25within you know a 17 18 year period you can see the various expansions that have taken place there and not only not only has bla expanded the facility but they have emerged as one of the country's premier soup and food processing companies uh so it's a name that's unnaturally recognized and i think it's a very fortunate that we have them here in florida and as i've said many times
3:53in dealing with particular industries not only are we looking to continuously diversify our industrial base so that we don't have all our you know irons in one fire but the fact of the matter is the food industry is pretty much recession-proof you know no matter what happens people always need to eat and the steadiness and the stewardship upon which uh mr blunt has uh grown this country uh
4:18company i think is evident in the quality of the product and the quality of the workforce that he currently has today um essentially you know if you look at blunt over the years um they've had a number of expansions into in october 2010 the company installed an energy efficient refrigeration system eco-friendly water filtration system and solar panels at the company's project to keep the business green
4:452011 blunt seafood fine foods complete expansion project that added 58 000 square feet to the pre-existing 65 000 square foot floor of a site although the company no longer processes seafoods focuses business model to offer artisan prepared foods and introduced a line of prepared sides and sauces in 2011 the company received the refrigerated foods process of the year award by the refrigerated and frozen
5:17foods magazine now the company is housed in a facility that represents 250 250 650 square feet and employs approximately a thousand people this project here is a 65 million dollar project for the 39 000 square foot expansion and the equipment will allow blonde fine foods to add a fifth chiller to their soup and food manufacturing process and allow the company to maintain its competitive edge in the food processing
5:51sector which is very competitive as part of the proposed expansion uh they project to create an additional 70 full-time opportunities within seven years what is being offered uh as part of the amendment um uh to the 2015 uh agreement is a actually got one two three four a 12-year amendment to the existing tips starting in fy 24.
6:25uh you can see right here does everybody have um value uh certificate of value sales you saw that time so essentially what we did is we keep in the same terms and conditions that they had in the 2015 agreement in which they were offered a 60 yearly exemption um as you know when we put these things together we make a best fade effort to try to identify what the actual cost savings will actually be
6:54but that's actually not determined by us by myself or by this board it's actually determined by the board of assessors who will actually do a valuation and that valuation will be uh codified and the schedule will be then applied to the valuation established by the board of assessors themselves so again i think you know this is a um another opportunity to facilitate the sound growth of uh fine foods
7:27um like i said they've been nothing but a uh a stalwart in the uh the community in terms of uh both helping the community and also you know leading the way with regard to new and innovative energy efficient and manufacturing uh processes and i'm hoping that the the tif board will find it uh acceptable and approve uh this particular proposal so that we can bring it forth to the council at its august 16th meeting
7:59i will be happy to entertain any questions and i'm sure uh mr blonde will also be happy to entertain any questions that you may have oh mr kadeem uh just two questions so the chart that you had given us the first one the incremental assessed value starts at the five point nine million i guess the four or five what's the reasoning for that oh i'm sorry that's that's that's that's the
8:21type i apologize yeah that's actually that type that should be a five nine two one all the way down again okay i apologize right all right um and then my other my other question just in terms of the 70 jobs that are going to be great do you have an estimate as to what the salary range would be for those jobs or hourly rates yeah we broke out the different um job classifications
8:44uh you know the majority is still the entry level um even today's world entry level's more um you know higher than it used to be uh and within that range is 15 to 20 dollars and then the other i can't remember about that's that's about 40 to 50 of the jobs the other 20 um our management and the management jobs are between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars on an annual salary
9:09basis perfect so it's um and then because in some of those fifteen to twenty dollar jobs you could extend up to twenty three dollars because uh there's second and third shift so they have like a differential so the top end is is 23 of the entry level right and there's also health care benefits obviously they're all eligible for the full blown program we only have one program for all hourly and salary people
9:36perfect uh so i i support the stiff um i want to thank you for your uh investment commitment to the uh continued commitment to fall river um i know the the tif speaks out speaks to keeping retaining 950 employees out of 1000 that you 1000 plus that you already have plus creating the 70. so i think it's a great win for the city of florida so i'll be supporting it excellent um any other questions
10:02i would just like to echo mr kadeem's uh uh comments uh he's been uh as ken cena star wars to the community and we'd like to thank you and your team for your continued investment in commitment in fall river excellent i just have a comment yeah yeah just a comment that i have um or a question to you how are you at getting employees are you having difficulty getting employees um yes so
10:33two things one of those you know we're national company now we have we built some facilities around the country and since this 2015 tip we filled out our commitment to that last project and then everything that happens inside and then we went to mckinney texas and have a hundred thousand square feet there in portland oregon so of the four facilities now obviously fall river is our preference for like
10:57six reasons that you could probably come up with the six i just said six but it's at least it's probably ten you know people location partnership we live here you know the waterfront on and on anyway um so when it comes to finding people those two other locations actually were harder just to as point of reference but yes it's difficult we still have 200 positions open and probably a hundred of those are in fall river
11:26and it's just they just stay open and so it's very very difficult so then what happens is the other employees are kind of like pitching in so if there's a thousand people you know there's there's there's they're each needing to do a little bit extra so but we do think i mean one of the only silver linings of the economy being you know shifted in this next 12 months is it could right-size employment so that
11:49there's still a job for everybody but there's not too many openings and there's not too many people looking for jobs i think we can get back to the sweet spot so i'm hoping this should come in the right timing between the economy between the world that we should be able to certainly we're going to build the 70 jobs but you know any other open job you know we want still to be filled as well
12:09thank you yeah thanks motion to approve second i have a motion second i think we should probably do a roll call on this one uh so everybody's on board um mr gonzalez yes mr marcioni yes thomas is absent seth is absent linda pereira yes sean kadeem yes uh pamela beau is absent mayor coogan yes thank you thank you so much thank you you're a great part of the community thank you second item is a um discussion
12:46of a tax increment exemption agreement buying between hanover properties in the city of fall river uh dated april of 2019.
12:56yes sure thank you um so this um this particular agenda item pertains to the lincoln school as you know the city um and uh high development corporation i actually uh entered is that i will actually high development entered into an agreement with um the former owner of the property to essentially step into that former owner's shoes and carry out the property in accordance with what was initially proposed
13:29as part of the initial agreement itself when that agreement was done um and subsequent to the time the score was purchased and some due diligence was done on it the former owner of the property received a tax increment exemption from the city uh which was in in keeping with other ties in the form of the fact that it was for a 10-year period the first five years there was an 80
13:57savings on the news tax value being created and the balance of the five years so is it 20 tax savings uh on the uh the new value being created um this these types of incentives are important to the project but at this point uh there is no current tie on the property i do suspect that the current owner or the former owner of the property himself is actually going to submit to matt thomas a
14:29request to rescind the existing tie so as to allow the new owner of the property to come forth at some point in time to actually seek a tax increment exemption involves the same terms and conditions i think that the uh the previous owner had on it so nothing to do today just wanted to put it on the radar screen have you guys mull it over yeah start thinking about it uh we'll probably have
14:52a meeting and now in the next four to six weeks to specifically address that um as the new pro or the property property owner that has the agreement on it moves forward to the closure closing on the property itself so ken i'm sorry uh so he was getting nothing even on the assessed value at that time when whatever it was he was tiff was not going to start until he
15:16developed the the yeah the tie the time the tie doesn't it doesn't begin until you get a certificate of occupancy uh so there was no tax savings uh there was no new value created yeah there was no exemption against that new value because that was created so the former owner was actually just paying taxes in accordance whatever the current tax value of the property but it was okay yeah so i was
15:40going to ask the same question so the benchmark is the occupancy yes yes that's how they're all that's all they're all okay yeah we may be changing the language a little bit because we may be looking at substantial completion or occupancy we're just trying to figure that out right now i'm a little concerned with this one just that i have questions on it um because i believe that the city sold the
16:05lincoln school for what five thousand um to be honest with you i'm not 100 sure it was five thousand and unfortunately the attorneys at the time um didn't place restrictions on it that if something wasn't done by a certain time that it would revert to the city when was this property initially purchased 2015-16 somewhere in that vicinity so the property stays vacant there's other properties not just this one but
16:36there's other schools that have concerns with that people bought and they're sitting on them doing nothing and in this particular case i mean we know that there was a lot of stuff that went on with this particular owner and what is the city going to get out of this i just kind of feel like we should get we should get something i know the legally documents were filled that perhaps should have been um
17:02but it just it's troublesome to me i'm just hoping that the city gets something the taxes are they up to date i i would yeah i haven't heard anything that they were not coming but those are the people actually that comes from the collective side frank i'm sorry but that was part of the deal yeah yeah the taxes yeah they've always been current and they have to be current in order yeah right so before they're closer
17:30but the city will receive a substantial amount of funds from this new sale okay well no we're gonna we we we did get the five i i'm not gonna say it was 10 but i but sean's might be right it was five or ten thousand dollars when we sold it back in 15 i think this this new the new owner after substantial negotiations between the new owner and um the president owner and the city going
17:58around back and forth we'll get well over i believe 350 000 is the possible new owner um subject to confidentiality so we don't know who the new owner is or will that come before us that's all publicly right yeah who's the new owner it's a possibility it's high i think it's high definition development real estate and we're getting better at these two aren't we with yeah with clawbacks and
18:30whatnot right yeah as far as these ties there there's never been a there's never been a clawback on the tie because typically you know they're they need it's not job creation it's the development of the the number of evidence right so yeah and they move quite quite fast on that yeah so ties are a lot less complicated than the tips because once you create the units then you make you've met your obligations right
18:54i i know that this is only up for discussion and i personally would like to look into it um a little bit more yeah that's i just wanted to just put it on the horizon that it's going to be for coming yeah you know there's some questions that i have in my mind that i'd like to just look into but yeah yeah no actually he was having a discussion tonight exactly keep saying tonight it's this
19:20morning but it feels like night yeah um any further questions from mrs viola okay thanks uh mr any new business to come before the tip for today any old business i'll entertain thank you