Commercial adequate facility tax increases
Mar. 2—The Wilson County Commission passed a resolution to increase the adequate facility tax (AFT) for commercial and industrial development in the county from $1,000 to $5,000 during its Monday night meeting.
"I think that we're a county that's very lucky to have the ability to do what we're able to do with our AFT," district 6 commissioner Beth Bowman said. "What we're proposing here tonight is a 500% tax increase on commercial AFT."
The resolution passed with a 17-7 majority vote.
While most commissioners were in favor of the increase, some — such as Bowman — were concerned.
Information included in the meeting packet showed 34 commercial AFTs in Wilson County from July of 2022 through January of 2023.
"If all of those 34 were at the minimum currently — $1,000 — and they were all increased to the new minimum of $5,000, that's an additional $4,000 on each of those, which would be $136,000," Bowman said. "If we went ahead and rounded it out times two to try and get a yearly number, that would put us around $300,000 on AFT."
District 3 commissioner Bobby Franklin believes that the increase in AFT would create less revenue than Bowman's calculations showed.
"I'll have to vote against it, mainly because this will only affect the smallest of developers and of those I would see people trying to get out of strip center rent, somebody that wants to invest in a first-time business," Franklin said. "I mean these are very small square footage that the minimums would only affect. I looked into it and found out we're only doing about five or six of them a year in these minimum ranges. We're not talking about $300,000. We're not even talking about $50,000. For me, to raise taxes 500% on something — anything — for that little amount of money, that's going to be hard for me to explain to my constituents."
Wilson County Mayor Randall Hutto explained that one of the rationales for the increase on commercial AFTs was to match a recent increase in residential AFTs.
"When a person comes in to build a house here, they pay $5,000 now, which was voted on recently," Hutto said. "When you build a large commercial building, they were only paying $1,000. They wanted to even those out and felt like that was just as important as all of the stuff that's brought to the commercial industry hasn't been addressed in quite some time."
District 15 commissioner Chris Dowell saw the increase as an opportunity to help fund schools in the Wilson County School District and the Lebanon Special School District.
"While we're talking about AFT, what did not come out of the budget committee was (an increase) for residential," district 21 commissioner Mike Kurtz said. "I think we're going to miss the boat. I understand we may be lucrative today, but I can tell you that there's two schools that'll be coming out of the ground soon out with Wilson County. There's a third one that's going to be coming out that we've purchased property for. We're already a high school behind, and the special school district is in the planning stages of building an elementary and a middle (school). That is a whole lot of education, and I understand that we might not be talking about a lot of money, but I view AFT as maybe not today's money ... but it's sure nice to have something there when we need it, and we're gonna need it."
According to the resolution, the increase in AFT went into effect with the commission's passing of the ordinance.
