SamPratt.com

Does the Holcim corporation make much in the way of a contribution to the finances of the City of Hudson? Not much, especially in comparison with other parts of the City, according to numbers obtained from local assessment rolls.

Some hard data appears below to answer the question of what, precisely, Holcim contributes to Hudson’s tax base—and how this compares with other taxpayers.

According to the 2010 Final roll prepared by Assessor Garth Slocum, Holcim’s assessment represents just 1% of the City’s total taxable value:

Yet in exchange for that unimpressive 1%, the company seems to be getting 99% deference in planning the future of the City’s waterfront.

Meanwhile, many business owners have expressed grave concern that this deeply flawed plan will forclose the possibility of adding a second major economic engine to complement that of the main street business district. So, how much does Warren Street contribute to Hudson’s tax coffers?

Properties on Warren represent 19% of the City’s total taxable value. In other words, 1 in 5 dollars that the City would in property taxes this coming year will come from Warren Street; only 1 in 100 comes from Holcim. (The taxable properties in the 500 block alone, highlighted in blue above, have an assessment four times higher than Holcim.)

And if Garth Slocum’s 2010 roll is thrown out by Acting Supreme Court Justice Paul Czajka in response to the HPOC lawsuit, and the 2009 roll were reinstated, the disparity would be even starker. Holcim’s share of the Hudson property tax pie would fall to less than 1% (.0084), whereas Warren Street’s share would rise to 21.5% (.2145).

In fact, the table above shows that individual blocks around the City contribute more to the City’s property tax base than Holcim. The 200, 300, 400 and 500 blocks of Union Street each represent between 1.2 and 1.6 times the assessed value of the seemingly all-important Holcim parcels in South Bay. Green Street and Glenwood Boulevard each contribute double what Holcim does. The 500 block of Warren contributes nearly four times Holcim’s property taxes.

And so on.

This hard data raises the question again: Why does a single company that contributes far less than locally-owned businesses and home owners get treated as if they are the only game in town by City officials? Holcim, to this site’s knowledge, also does not contribute sales tax revenues to the City coffers (being a bulk/wholesale operation, with subsidiaries based either out of state or out of the country entirely). Moreover, there is not a shred of evidence available to indicate that the draft Waterfront plan’s support for such destructive uses would create new jobs for local residents. As with this company’s failed “Greenport project,” the economic assumptions and claims made by Holcim and its boosters have no factual basis. They appear to be driven more by a nostalgia for a long-gone day when technology was less advanced, meaning that such industries actually employed thousands of people—which they no longer do.

During a recent meeting with Common Council representatives, planner Frank Fish of BFJ made a raft of unsubstantiated claims to support his firm’s decision to ignore public input— choosing instead to cheerlead for the supposed value of having a heavy industrial presence at the Hudson Waterfront.

Among Fish’s offhand comments was a claim that doing so would be “good for the tax base.” The planner offered no data to support his unsourced notion, and the draft LWRP which he and City attorney Cheryl Roberts presents no analysis of the benefits and trade-offs which would result from their choices.

And indeed, the 2005 ruling by Secretary of State found that zoning out discordant and incompatible heavy industrial activities would ultimately be better for the economic growth and stability of Hudson—because it would bring more people to the River, and allow other more mutually-supportive businesses to thrive.