Commissioners grant Blue Flint exemption
BY RALPH MANCINI
EDITOR
Although Blue Flint Ethanol didn’t receive the 10-year, 100 percent tax exemption it originally applied for, the McLean County Commission authorized a five-year tax relief package while the biorefinery repowers operations.
McLean County State Attorney Ladd Erickson pitched the five-year exemption plan at the Jan. 19 commissioner’s meeting, detailing how Blue Flint would be 100 percent absolved of having to pay taxes on their repowering investments in years one and two. That exemption, he continued, would be reduced to 80 percent over the third and fourth years and bottom out at 60 percent in its fifth and final year.
Erickson detailed that the corporation’s tax savings on its new venture — which includes the addition of utilities, water, natural gas and other services — wouldn’t impact the approximately $225,000 in property taxes it pays annually. Area schools, he added, wouldn’t be impacted by the tax break, since educational subsidies would emanate from those property taxes and not the exempted dues.
“We’ll maintain our base property taxes for schools and for everybody. We’re not out anything. And the county has an economic incentive for our farmers to continue an ethanol operation out there and eventually we’ll get our 100 percent on new investments after five years,” explained Erickson.
The local prosecutor further touched on the impending shutdown of Coal Creek Station (CCS) — which supplies Blue Flint with thermal and utility supplies — and how the ethanol bioreinery in question cannot wait for CCS to issue an announcement on its future.
Blue Flint, it was noted, must finalize its business plan in the next 30 days and sign off on contracts to kick off their repowering effort. The endeavor will reportedly cost the Midwest AgEnergy subsidiary tens of millions of dollars.
