Commissioners OK tax abatement for manufacturing company
The Richland County Commissioners have approved an enterprise zone tax abatement that will help a local company better deal with supply chain issues and move into the electrification age. The board gave final approval on Tuesday to a request by CAL Holdings and JTW Incorporated, doing business as Michael Byrne Manufacturing, for a 10-year, 60% property tax abatement for a $1.5 million expansion project.
Leslie Weist, vice president of manufacturing, said construction of a new 10,000-square-foot building on company property on Earth Boring Road will create seven new jobs over three years and will be one of the biggest investments that the company will be making.
“Right now we have one large main manufacturing building and we’re looking to build a second one so we can move all our CNC machining operations into that new building,” she said, referring to Computer Numerical Control machines. ‘It will allow us to upgrade some of our CNC machines and give us more space for our welding, fabrication and machine assembly in our existing building.”
Michael Byrne Manufacturing is one of the two leading manufacturers of underground earth boring machines used for the installation of sewer and water lines, culverts, pipelines and other underground utilities ranging in diameter from 12 inches to 84 inches. The company has 23 full time employees.
“It became more evident through the COVID ordeal and the supply chains that we’re dealing with and the issues with them that the more we can do in house, the better off we are going to be positioned within our market to meet our customers’ needs, which as the infrastructure builds we anticipate being very busy,” said company president Jim Weist. “As we’re going, we’re starting to look at getting into more of the electrification of the equipment and that’s part of the reason why we’re looking to expand into this building as well.”
Costs for county jail food to increase
Commissioners learned that inflation is going to affect the cost of food for the county jail and the Community Alternative Center next year as they approved the final renewal of a food service contract with Trinity Food Services Group Incorporated of Oldsmar, Florida. The renewal calls for an 8.6% increase for 2023, which follows a 5.8% increase this year.
“We did talk about going out for bid for this year but we decided that it would not be advantageous for the county at this time, mainly because of where the competition is we don’t think we would get better prices than just the renewal,” said Central Services administrator Rachael Troyer.
Jail administrator Captain Chris Blunk said the increase pushes the cost to $2.03 per meal based on 601 to 650 meals served per day. He said average daily jail population is 175, although it has been “in the 140s” the last few days.
Commissioners appropriated $540,000 for jail inmate meals this year.
33 acres owned by Lexington schools annexed
Commissioners also approved the annexation of 33 acres of land owned by the Lexington Local School district into the village. The land includes the baseball and softball fields and soccer practice fields that are part of the new school district campus.
Village Law Director John Studenmund, who represented the school district, said the annexation was just a formality that would bring law enforcement under Lexington police jurisdiction. He said annexation was talked about during building construction but action was “pushed aside” when other village legal matters came up.
Commissioners also met in executive session with Human resources manager Kelley Christiansen and Michelle Swank, director of Dayspring, the county assisted living facility, before approving a memo of understanding with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3014. According to Commissioners chairman Tony Vero, the MOU affects 26 employees and, provides retention stipends, increases some low starting pay rates, makes equity adjustments for some current employees, and provides more administrative flexibility in work scheduling, particularly for weekends.
Starting rates include $11 per hour for food service workers; $13 per hour for medical clerk, cooks, custodian/driver and resident care attendant; $13.50 for the food service manager; $15 per hour for the activity coordinator and $21 per hour for an LPN. Stipends are $250 or $500 depending on whether an employee is full time or part time with a set schedule.
The board also spent about one hour analyzing more general fund budget requests for 2023 in an effort to bring them within estimated revenue. The difference was taken down from a figure a little over $200,000 at the end of budget work on Monday to $51,359 mainly by reducing the amount of increase requested for Juvenile Court salary and health insurance line items.
Commissioners did increase the amount to be allocated for contracted autopsies for the coroner's office but made no major changes to budget proposals for the Clerk of Courts, Recorder, Treasurer, Prosecutor and maintenance.
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Commissioners OK enterprise zone, annexation, jail food contract
