MONTGOMERY – The public filled a meeting room at Montgomery Town Hall with their views regarding the USEF Sailfish proposal to operate a planned one-million-square-foot warehouse for Amazon at the intersections of I-84 and Route 747 near the Newburgh Town line.
Montgomery originally courted Amazon with a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) agreement that would give the applicant a 100 percent property tax exemption for the first five years of a 15-year agreement. But recent negotiations have saved taxpayers $2.7 million that lower the tax exemption to 80 percent during the first five years of the 15-year agreement.
“Ideally, I’d love to have 10-year PILOTS as opposed to 15-year PILOTS, but it’s better than nothing,” said Brian Maher, Montgomery town supervisor. “We think it’s absolute win in terms of what the previous agreement was.”
Sailfish will contribute $26 million during the life of the agreement to various town taxing districts, compared to the estimated $690,000 in tax revenue if the land remained vacant.
Don Berger, who lives in the Village of Montgomery, was at the public hearing with other residents opposed to the tax breaks used to attract corporations. “We have been following the growth here in Montgomery, and we are opposed to the IDA tax abatements that are being given to large corporations like Amazon and Medline,” he said. “We are here to fight those applications.”
The IDA board will meet again on Friday to vote on whether or not to accept the new PILOT plan.
