New board to address financial liabilities on Stinger Welding property
One of the first tasks for the new Lincoln County Port Authority governing board — once two additional members are appointed — will be determining how to handle the payment of taxes, penalties and interest that have accrued on the long-vacant Stinger Welding building.
The outstanding liabilities total about $424,000, according to Tina Oliphant, the Port Authority’s executive director, who brought up the matter at the Jan. 24 meeting of the Lincoln County Commission.
The Port Authority agreed to take responsibility for the tab in early November, following about six months of outside-of-court mediation with Fisher Industries, which owns the building and the land it sits on and agreed to pay state and federal tax liens.
“My point in coming here today is we need a strategy,” Oliphant told the commissioners. “Some of that is amassing more information to understand, especially from you, what we think we can and can’t do.”
The crux of the discussion — and that’s all it was, for it wasn’t an item for the commissioners to vote on — was whether the Commission could or should waive any of the local financial liabilities connected to the property.
The $424,000 balance includes $94,000 in interest, $6,000 in penalties, and $28,000 in beneficial use taxes applied to overhead cranes that were removed from the facility in 2016. The liabilities have been accruing since 2012, the year Stinger Welding CEO Carl Douglas died in a plane crash.
Following Douglas’ death, the already struggling company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and eventually closed the business.
At Wednesday’s meeting, County Treasurer Nancy Trotter Higgins said she didn’t believe the commissioners could waive penalties or interest, set by state law at two percent and 10 percent respectively, but did believe they could write off taxes that are five years old or older “as long as there’s not back taxes due to (current) bankruptcy or litigation.”
She recommended verifying with the Office of the County Attorney what the law allows.
Acknowledging that more information was needed before any decisions could be made — and that the Port Authority board couldn’t proceed until its two at-large members are chosen in the coming weeks — the commissioners and County Administrator Darren Coldwell expressed hesitancy at waiving taxes.
Coldwell said he would anticipate “some real big push back” if the county chose to do so, and Commissioner Mike Cole said his “initial thought is that the citizens of Lincoln County deserve that tax.”
Higgins noted that in the 12 years she’s been County Treasurer, the Commission has yet to waive any real property tax.
The Commission also was cold on the idea of acquiring the property by paying off its tax liability.
“I think our stance as far as those properties is we don’t want to be in the business of buying and owning property,” Commissioner Mark Peck said.
Oliphant said there was “no major time crunch” for a decision to be made, but noted that the amount continues to accrue.
“We need to run this out a lot further and understand it a lot better,” Peck said. “At a minimum, we would need to have the two citizens on board weighing in on this and a lot of open explaining what the hell we’re doing.”
The two citizens Peck referred to are the people needed to round out the new five-member Port Authority governing board the Commission approved earlier in Wednesday’s meeting. The other three board members are the three county commissioners. The new board replaces the former nine-member, all-volunteer board.
As of Monday morning, the former Stinger Welding property was listed for sale at $3,415,000. According to its agreement with the Port Authority, Fisher Industries will receive the first $750,000 of the sale price and 65 percent of the remaining balance.