UPDATE, May 4: The Board of Adjustment voted 3-1 May 2 to issue the permit. Marjorie Evans voted no and David Prewitt recused himself due to a possible conflict of interest, The Woodford Sun reports.
UPDATE, April 27: The Fiscal Court voted April 26 to issue $120 million in industrial revenue bonds for the project, with payments in lieu of taxes to be made to the county. The company also agreed to pay for new nozzles and hoses for the county fire station in Midway and up to $25,000 worth of training for firefighters.
By Aayat Ali
UPDATE, April 27: The Fiscal Court voted April 26 to issue $120 million in industrial revenue bonds for the project, with payments in lieu of taxes to be made to the county. The company also agreed to pay for new nozzles and hoses for the county fire station in Midway and up to $25,000 worth of training for firefighters.
By Aayat Ali
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media
The
Woodford County Agricultural Advisory Review Committee voted 3-1 Wednesday to
recommend that the Board of Adjustment grant Brown-Forman Corp.’s request for a
conditional use permit to build whiskey warehouses just north of Midway
Station.
Brown-Forman
fared less well the night before, as the Woodford County Fiscal Court voiced
unhappiness with the company’s plans for payments in lieu of taxes on the
warehouses and whiskey as part of its request for tax-exempt bonds to finance
the project.
The Louisville-based distiller is seeking to build the 12 warehouses on 113
acres of Homer Michael Freeney’s 400-acre farm as an agricultural enterprise,
but the main concern among the committee members was how bourbon can be
considered an agricultural product.
Committee member John Wilhoit, the dissenter, expressed his
concerns over the definition of agriculture and said it was “a stretch” to
consider bourbon an agricultural product.
Committee member Lindy Huber shared similar concerns.
“I’ve thought about a lot of other agriculture products and
how they can be interpreted in the finished product,” she said. “If someone were to grow cotton in Woodford
County and wanted to set up a textile mill, is that an agricultural product? To
me, food and fiber is what agriculture is, and bourbon does not fit into that
category.”
But committee member Skip Philips said if only food and
fiber fell under the definition of agriculture, “Where do you fit in tobacco?” He said that he considers bourbon and tobacco
to be agricultural products, especially with no processing facility to create a
distraction amid the farmland.
Steve Rushell, attorney for Brown-Forman, drew a distinction
between this project and a more intrusive industrial or manufacturing project,
saying it has no noise or air emissions.
He also said Brown-Forman is purchasing about 50,000 bushels of corn a
year and would prefer to buy most of it in Woodford County if it meets
Brown-Forman’s standards.
Lynn Martin, a tenant on Freeney’s farm, said he supported
the project. Brown-Forman said it would
make arrangements for Martin to cross the access road at certain points so he
can continue operating the farm. The 113
acres would not be acquired all at once, so over the 12-year development of the
warehouses, two per year, Brown-Forman would lease to Martin the land it does
not use.
Brown-Forman’s Woodford Reserve Distillery is located off
McCracken Pike in Versailles and is a popular tourist site. For the new warehouses in Midway,
Brown-Forman says the barrels would be shipped to Georgetown Road over New Cut
Road to U.S. 60 and down Interstate 64 to the Midway exit. This would be shortest route between the two
locations without using back roads and coming through downtown Midway.
Ruschell introduced a list of conditions of the permit. He said they would help preserve the land and
make sure the warehouses don’t become a distraction, by:
• Using own-box
lighting that will not illuminate beyond the farm
• Using signage to make it clear that no visitors are allowed on the site
• Limiting
truck traffic to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday
• Limiting construction traffic from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday
• Limiting construction traffic from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday
• Requiring
outdoor activities to be conducted at least 300 feet from surrounding
properties
• Not using
reflective roofs
• Building
a three-million gallon retention pond to prevent spillage into South Elkhorn
Creek
“The
first warehouse will be well over 1,100 feet from Georgetown Road,” Ruschell
said. “The reason it’s being located
there is to make sure the pastoral setting is preserved.”
Fiscal Court meeting
On Tuesday, other Brown-Forman attorneys, Timothy Eifler and
Mark Franklin of Stoll Keenon Ogden, returned to the fiscal court for more
discussion of their request for $120 million in industrial revenue bonds to
purchase the land and build the warehouses.
The issue for the court is the proposed PILOT (payment in
lieu of taxes) agreement that the company presented.
“We
negotiated with the school district and worked out a PILOT formula,” Eifler
said. “Typically these are designed to
cover situations where a project is going to cause additional costs or burdens
imposed on a local government, so the PILOT is there to deal with that.”
Industrial revenue bonds create a property-tax exemption.
Some members of the court felt that other county functions,
such as the fire department and the county government itself, deserved more of
the payments. The annual payment per
barrel would be about $2.50. The school
district would receive 70.2 percent of the payments and the county would get
7.4 percent.
“The county has not raised its tax rates,” Judge-Executive
John Coyle said. “We have made cuts, we
have laid off employees, we have done everything to provide everything that is
needed for the citizens of Woodford County.
The school board, on the other hand, raises its tax rates to the maximum
every year.”
The court deferred further discussion of the matter until
its April 26 meeting.
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