By Stephen Smoot
During a lengthy Count Commision session last week, a West Virginia State Auditor’s Office decision served as the focal point for a debate on issues separating the Charles Pointe TIF District developer and bondholder.
This came from an impending tax sale of properties at Charles Pointe Development. The West Virginia State Auditor’s Office had ruled that the tax sale should not take place due to concerns raised by the current owners.
Trecost moved to take no action on the resolution since the Auditor’s Office while Hinkle moved to adopt it, saying “both our attorneys and the bondholder recommend it.”
Hinkle went on the explain that he had possession of “letters (that) tend to imply and accuse our Assessor of erroneous calculations that they reported to the Auditor’s Office.” he went on to say that “I don’t think the Auditor’s Office was given the proper information and I’m appalled that taxpayer would hire this law firm to go around harrison County and get these tax tickets removed.”
The State Auditor’s office, according to Pysz-Laulis, suspended 41 tickets from the sale. Trecost pointed out that the “taxpayer” in question had invested $80 million in the project and created “thousands of jobs” in the process. He stated that the “taxpayer” had “doubled the size of one of our cities.”
Referring to the bondholder supporting the sale, Trecost fired a shot, saying “who is this gentleman that nobody knows” that wants to County to go against a State-level decision.
Tom Aman, an attorney representing the bondholder, responded by saying that “the county has no reason to believe the actions of the State Auditor is in accordance with State law.” he added that “the bondholder has come to the table several times in the past to try and avoid this.”
That included granted requests for forbearance in the past. Aman also explained that the bondholder was aware of the mistaken assessments, but added that “the party prejudiced is the bondholder.”
Discussions continued, mostly between Trecost and Hinkle. In them, Hinkle accused Genesis, the “taxpayer” and developer of Charles Pointe, of trying “to skirt this Commission and this tax office with emails . . . to get their tax tickets pulled” from the sale.
“Then they go straight to the Auditor’s Office . . . (and) try to put the blame on this gentleman over here who is an elected official . . . why would I take anything the Auditor’s Office has to say at face value?”
Hinkle then stated that “they are blaming a County official why the tickets were wrong . . . based on information the taxpayer supplied the Auditor, not this Commission, not the taxpayers of this County.”
He finished with “that ought to bother the H*** out of everybody in this room, how you can call the Auditor’s office, say whatever you want . . . and they turn around and say we shouldn’t have a tax sale.”
Aman added that the bondholder “will be very aggrieved and very dismayed if the properties are pulled from the sale,” but kept the door open to another arrangement.”
Hinkle stated that after the last forbearance agreement that “this Commission said we’d never do it again and Genesis said they’d make sure this never came about and here we sit today.”
At the end of the debate, Commissioners rejected Trecost’s motion two to one and accepted Hinkle’s unanimously.
