The Greene County board of supervisors will have as an agenda item next Monday approval of $10,000 funneled through the Greene County Development Corporation (GCDC) for the Scranton Manufacturing expansion project.
Chad Schreck of Midwest Partnership spoke with the supervisors on Monday, reminding them they had previously agreed to help with matching funds for a grant application to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Watershed Protection program for work at Scranton Manufacturing. That grant was not obtained, but the current expansion project did receive funding via a USDA loan and a $250,000 grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA). GCDC in applying for the IEDA grant pledged $60,000 in matching funds. Schreck questioned the supervisors’ commitment to assist GCDC with those matching funds.
Ground was broken on the project in late June. The expansion is expected to create 75 new manufacturing jobs.
Supervisor Guy Richardson serves ex officio on the GCDC board. He said that years ago the county had reduced funding to GCDC, and he remembered the board telling GCDC “if a special project comes along, come see us and we’ll talk about it and see what we can come up with. This is exactly that happening.”
The supervisors expect to provide GCDC with $5,000 in additional funding for each of the next two years. The expenditure must be posted on the agenda before it can be approved. The regular annual allocation to GCDC is $47,500.
The money will come from the supervisors’ Dreyfus fund. Louis Dreyfus Commodities LLC at the time it built its Grand Junction ethanol plant pledged to the county $50,000 a year for 18 years in lieu of paying property taxes on the improvements to the property. (Dreyfus pays property taxes only on the land, not the structures.)
According to auditor Jane Heun, the supervisors use about half of the fund each year to support Elderbridge, Habitat for Humanity, congregate meal sites, the Bell Tower Festival, Central Iowa Tourism, ACCESS, libraries, and the like.
