Council advances incentive package for Lakeshore expansion, readies new franchise for cable and internet

Mayor Grayson Vandegrift talks with Helen Rentch, a major supporter of The Homeplace at Midway, in front of the van that the city helped the nursing home and assisted-living facility buy. The rear of the van has donors' logos. The Homeplace brought the van to the City Council meeting. (Photo by Kennedy Sabharwal, University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media)

By Kennedy Sabharwal

University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media

The Midway City Council approved some incentives for Lakeshore Learning Materials’ expansion, and held first reading on others, at its meeting Monday evening. It also approved a franchise for a new telecommunications company to serve the city.

Lakeshore: One reason Lakeshore chose Midway to house its Eastern U.S. distribution center in 2016 was the incentives offered by the city, Woodford County and the state. Now that the company has decided to build a warehouse and add 100 jobs, the same incentives are at work, plus a new one.

One incentive was that the occupational tax on the company payroll would be decreased from 2% to 1.5% for 10 years once the company had reached its promise to employ 262 people. The city will grant a similar decrease once the warehouse has reached 100 employees, and make a similar reduction in the occupational tax on the company’s additional net profits for five years.

“I thought it was a fair but reasonable offer to make,” as the city competed with Beaumont, Texas, for the facility, Mayor Grayson Vandegrift said. He said Midway collected only $5,000 a year in net-profits tax until Lakeshore arrived, and the company pays “about six times that.”

The net-profits incentive is in an ordinance, which will require a second reading before passage. The other incentives were in resolutions that the council passed unanimously and without debate.

Another incentive is industrial revenue bonds, which the city will issue to give Lakeshore a lower interest rate for financing construction of the warehouse. “The city’s not pledging its credit,” said Timothy Eifler of Louisville, an attorney for Lakeshore.

Since the city will own the land and lease it back to Lakeshore, it will not be taxed, but part of the agreement is that Lakeshore will pay Woodford County Schools the same amount that it would pay in taxes if it owned the property.

              

TV and internet service: Though the city of Midway already has a cable television and internet provider, Spectrum, many residents have voiced discontent with it. A proposed ordinance hat got first reading Monday would grant a non-exclusive franchise to MetroNet so it can use city streets and property to build its service.

Vandegrift said second reading and likely passage of the proposed ordinances will be on Oct. 7. In June, when a MetroNet representative spoke to the council, the mayor said "I've been very impressed" with the company and agreed with the representative's statements that the firm has "the best technology available in the world" for internet, television and telephone."

The representative said the company is coming to Midway because it recently got a contract to serve the county schools, and would be seeking a similar non-exclusive franchise from the Woodford County Fiscal Court.

Softball shenanigans: Kim Wilson of Elkton Place, a short street at the south end of the city, asked to buy a small piece of land between her home and the Midway softball field, which is used by Midway University.

“No offense to the Midway softball team, but they’re just outrageously slobs,” by littering and urinating on the wooded tract, Wilson said, adding that she has voiced her concerns to the university, but the issues persist.

University spokeswoman Ellen Gregory told the Messenger in an email, “The comment on those urinating on property was in reference to umpires. . . . When we were first notified of this issue by the property owner, our head of security spoke directly to an umpire, who was an offender. And our softball coach has also spoken to the umpires to correct the improper behavior and will communicate this again to the conference assignor. The university pays for two Portalets at the field during the school year; those were delivered again Aug. 29 for this year. We also have trash cans onsite; our grounds crew mows the area and our security monitors the field daily.”

The presumption at the meeting was that the city owns the land, but Vandegrift said in an email after the meeting that “the bulk of the property” belongs to the owner of an adjacent farm, whom the city will send “a letter notifying her that she will need to maintain the property from here on out.”

Flooding: James and Sandy Reynolds asked for help with the flooding of the basement of a church in the Loft Apartments building they own on Dudley Street, next to the sloped parking lot for The Brown Barrel & Blind Harry’s.

Vandegrift said the issue needs to be fixed but it is on private property, and “I’m not going to spend taxpayers’ money on what is not a taxpayers’ problem.” Reynolds said he didn’t want that, just advice and approval to take the problem into his own hands.

Tuesday, Vandegrift emailed the council and news media saying a consulting engineer from the city “looked at the area today and determined the problems they are experiencing are not due to city issues. I encourage the property owners to hire their own engineers to alleviate their flooding issues.”

Other business: Last fall, a wagon selling pumpkins was forced to relocate because it lacked a temporary encroachment permit for the parking space it occupied. Farmers Michael Greathouse and Carissa Arnold asked for a permit to set up at 112 S. Gratz St., saying they would set up the wagon immediately after the Fall Festival until Nov. 1. The council granted the permit.

The city recently aided The Homeplace at Midway by donating $5,000 a 12-passenger van that cost $25,000. The van made an appearance at the meeting, and smiles were shared between council members and Homeplace employees and supporters.