Record · Local legislation
Wood County Commissioners Resolution 23-01249 — Authorize Community Reinvestment Area Agreement between Liames LLC and Wood County, Ohio, 2023-09-28
2023-09-28-liames-cra
Fields
instrument
Wood County Commissioners Resolution 23-01249 — Authorize Community Reinvestment Area Agreement between Liames LLC and Wood County, Ohio, 2023-09-28
resolution_no
23-01249
body
Board of County Commissioners, Wood County, Ohio
body_kind
county_commissioners
subject_matter
tax_incentive
statute
R.C. 3735.65-3735.70
adopted
2023-09-28
journalled_in
Resolution 23-01253 (2023-10-03), "In the matter of approval of prior meeting minutes from the regular session held on September 28, 2023." # [verified]
title_verbatim
AUTHORIZE COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT AREA AGREEMENT BETWEEN LIAMES LLC AND WOOD COUNTY, OHIO
outcome
approved
vote
- motion approve resolution 23-01249 (the CRA agreement with Liames LLC)
- motion_moved_by Doris I. Herringshaw
- motion_seconded_by Theodore H. Bowlus
- presiding Craig LaHote
- roll_call_recorded no
- tally_verbatim All voted aye and the motion carried.
- note The item was PULLED from the consent listing at the start of the day ("with the exception of resolutions 23-01249 (Community Reinvestment Area Agreement) and 23-01250 ... which will be held until later in the day's session") and taken up as a separate 10:15 a.m. session, concluding 10:28 a.m. — thirteen minutes. [verified]
beneficiary
- name Liames, LLC
- described_as "Liames LLC plans to construct one or more data center buildings on property located at State Route 582 and Mercer Road in Middleton Township." # [verified] as said
- note THE END USE IS ON A PUBLIC RECORD ON 2023-09-28. That is nineteen months before the 2025-04-09 Meta announcement and three days after the first Liames deed was recorded. The NDA concealed the OPERATOR; it did not conceal that the land would become data centers, nor the location, nor the scale. Nothing in this journal names Meta.
terms
- exemption_pct 75
- term_years 15
- tax_type real property
- executed_agreement —
- cra_boundary —
school_compensation
- statement_verbatim "He noted that Eastwood and Otsego Local Schools, as well as Penta Career Center, have already approved agreements accepting the terms of a tax abatement for the company. The local school districts are estimated to receive approximately $1 million annually."
- parties
- Eastwood Local Schools
- Otsego Local Schools
- Penta Career Center
- annual_estimate_usd 1000000
- annual_estimate_tag [reference]
- ISSUE_BODY_CORRECTION ISSUE #1438 SAYS "~$900k-1M/yr EACH". The journal says "The local school districts are estimated to receive approximately $1 million annually" — one figure, for the districts plural. Whether that is per district or in aggregate is genuinely ambiguous on the face of the sentence, and it is left ambiguous here rather than resolved in either direction; the compensation agreements themselves are the instrument and they are [open]. Note also that the journal names THREE parties — the issue names two. Penta Career Center is a joint vocational school district and was omitted from the register until now.
- agreements —
- sequencing_note [verified] All three school bodies had ALREADY approved before the county acted. The township passed its own resolution of support eight days earlier (2023-09-20). The county resolution is the last signature on a chain, not the first.
representations
- id JOBS-AND-PAYROLL
- statement_verbatim "The new data centers will create 50 full-time jobs resulting in an estimated $4,000,000 annual payroll."
- speaker Wade Gottschalk, Wood County Economic Development executive director
- tag [reference]
- note THIS IS HALF THE JOB COUNT NOW IN CIRCULATION. Meta's own 2026-01-07 letter to the Middleton Township trustees says "at least 100 operational jobs," and the register carries ~100 permanent at an average in the mid-$80,000s. The abatement was granted against a representation of 50. $4,000,000 / 50 = $80,000 average, which is consistent with the later per-job figure — so what changed is the headcount, not the wage. [inference] on the arithmetic; the reason for the change is [open], and note the two figures were made by different parties at a two-and-a-half-year interval, so this is not necessarily a revision of the same estimate.
- id LOW-IMPACT
- statement_verbatim "Mr. Gottschalk stated the new facilities will be low impact for the area and will not create truck traffic."
- speaker Wade Gottschalk
- tag [reference]
- id BUILDING-SIZE
- statement_verbatim "Commissioner Bowlus asked about the size of the buildings. Mr. Knezevic stated the buildings will be approximately 300-400 square feet."
- speaker Chris Knezevic, Vorys (for the applicant)
- tag [reference]
- note CARRIED VERBATIM AND FLAGGED, NOT CORRECTED. As printed this is three orders of magnitude below the 715,000 sq ft initial phase Meta later disclosed, and it is not plausible on its face — an omitted "thousand" in the minutes is the obvious reading, and 300,000-400,000 sq ft per building against a 715,000 sq ft two-building initial phase would reconcile almost exactly. It is left as the record has it because this corpus does not silently repair a public body's minutes, and because the transcription is OCR: the possibility that the printed page says something else is real and is why this is [reference] with the quote attached. [inference] on the reconciliation, [open] on what the page actually says.
- id EXPANSION-POTENTIAL
- statement_verbatim "Commissioner Bowlus asked if the number of employees could increase. Mr. Knezevic stated he is not certain but there is potential for further expansion."
- speaker Chris Knezevic
- tag [reference]
tif
- status contemplated_not_adopted
- statement_verbatim "Mr. Gottschalk mentioned that a Tax Increment Financing agreement is also to be considered at a later date that would follow the 15-year tax abatement."
- note ISSUE #1438 LISTS "the follow-on TIF" AS AN INSTRUMENT TO PULL, WHICH PRESUPPOSES IT EXISTS. As of 2023-09-28 it was a future item, described as FOLLOWING the fifteen-year abatement — i.e. from roughly 2039. No Wood County TIF for this project was located. That negative is weak and is stated as such: the county's static minutes tree stops at 2024-05-30 and the CivicEngage Agenda Center that succeeded it does not index the commissioners' minutes full-text (a search for "tax increment" across all its categories returns nothing, and so does a search for "Meta"). See record-watch.yaml → WOOD-COUNTY-TIF. [open] NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE ABBOTT TIF: the City of Bowling Green's own community action plan states "City Council passed an ordinance with a TIF agreement for Abbott Industries in November 2023" — a different party, a different body, a different project, one month apart.
public_comment
- speaker Ross Fought
- status A township resident. He appears in the county journal's attendance recital alongside staff, which reads as if he were an official; the Middleton Township minutes of 2023-10-04 settle it — "Resident Ross Fought shared his concerns over the tax abatement that was provided to Liames, LLC". [verified]
- position against
- statement_summary Lives west of the proposed site; not against economic development or this project in particular, but "concerned with the tax abatement" — that "giving away property tax revenue is concerning," that "property taxes are going up and Wood County property owners will be paying their share while a new company has their taxes abated for 15 years," that the county "has numerous assets available to bring businesses without having to offer tax abatements," and that "Wood County is doing well and there is no need to give away the county coffers."
- note The only public comment recorded on this item, and it was opposed. He raised the same objection to the township six days later. Recorded because the completeness of a public record's comment section is itself evidence.
appearances
- commissioners
- Doris I. Herringshaw
- Theodore H. Bowlus
- Craig LaHote
- county_administrator Carri Stanley
- assistant_administrator Dan Scherger
- clerk_of_the_board Sandy Long
- economic_development Wade Gottschalk (Wood County Economic Development, executive director)
- applicant_counsel Chris Knezevic, Vorys
- also_present
- Rex Huffman
- Jerry Greiner
⚠ Gaps in the record
- OCR source, no text layer. Resolution number and title are cross-checked against the printed listing; free prose is as OCRed.
- Every dollar and job figure here is a statement MADE at the meeting, not a term of the executed agreement. The agreement, the CRA boundary and the three school compensation agreements are all [open].
- "approximately 300-400 square feet" is carried verbatim and is not plausible on its face. Do not cite it as a building size.
Where it connects
bowling-green/commissioners/2023-09-28-liames-cra.resolution.yaml · p.1 · bowling-green