Legislator Korce Quotes (7 Quotes)

When we first began this process we did not know how much or how little to tax the wind companies. That is why this legislature determined that it needed to hire an outside consultant to explain the industry to us and examine the proposed projects.

He has done a tremendous job for the people of this county. I am not sure if everyone realizes the amount of time, effort and work he puts into his job. I do not know how he finds the time to do everything he does. We are lucky to have him.

We do not want to sell away a viable PILOT program for the sake of moving the projects along. We are still collecting information because much of the information we have is based on assumptions. We are waiting to receive real, hard information. It is not our intention to block the projects, in fact we want to stay neutral.

The county has never said that it is opposed to these projects, nor is it trying to kill these projects. We are trying to determine each company's ability to pay their fair share. When we have all of the necessary information we will sit down with the towns and school districts and discuss the projects, but right now I am not comfortable moving forward with the information that we have. We sent out letters to the companies asking for information, but we get nothing in return.

To board out all of our prisoners for one year will cost us approximately 1.86 million.

We are going to make a decision on what is fair and move forward from there. We are going to sit down with the towns, the school districts and the companies and discuss this issue. We will certainly take this testimony in consideration during those talks.

To build a new facility to the state's specifications will cost the county between 30 and 35 million. To issue a bond to pay for that 35 million project would require a 2.8 million increase in the property tax levy. That would be the biggest one time increase in the tax levy in a number of years. And that payment would be with us for 20 years. It is not something that is going to go away once we build it.