Lancaster farming. (Lancaster, Pa., etc.) 1955-current, June 28, 2003, Image 200

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Already, the farms buy 71 percent ot their corn
for grain and 100 percent of their corn for silage
locally.
Fiscally, the two counties in the study experi
enced very different situations. “I expected the out
comes to be much more similar, but we encountered
a lot of differences between the two counties,” Roe
said. “That’s good, because I think it makes this
study much more .informative for other communi
ties who can make use of this data.”
The two biggest fiscal costs local governments
can incur with new dairies are those involved with
road improvements necessary for the heavy
trucks traveling to and from the dairies and the
effect new property tax income can have on school
funding from the state, Roe said.
“It can be a nightmare to understand how school
funding works with the local property taxes,” Roe
said. “If things aren’t set up properly, schools could
lose up to a dollar in state funding for every dollar
of new property taxes collected locally,”
In these cases, all seven dairies entered into Tax
Increment Financing (TIF) agreements to distribute
the new tax dollars to specific governmental agen
cies. In four of the seven agreements, part of the tax
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money was directed as “gifts” to local schools,
which protects a school’s state funding. Most of the
rest of the tax money is directed toward road con
struction and maintenance.
“We asked other agencies, such as the sheriffs
offices, local health departments and emergency
management agencies, if they incurred extra costs
due to the new dairies, and they reported none,”
Roe said. “Roads really are the biggest expense.”
Roe and his team examined fiscal impacts over a
30-year period, the length of time often used for
evaluating projects with long-term implications. In
examining the best- and worst-case scenarios for a
variety of fiscal costs and income, he estimated that
the total fiscal impact over 30 years in Paulding
County would amount to a gain of $170,700, while
the total gain in Van Wert County would total
$1,156 million.
Reasons for the large difference between the two
counties include:
• Van Wert County was able to get a Community
Development Block Grant from federal sources to
fund $72,000 of road improvements for one dairy.
• Because of the grant, Van Wert County in
curred very little debt —just over $23,000 —to sup-
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