Larry HenryAt least one more meeting between the Hamilton County Commission and the county Board of Education is needed to discuss how to handle $6 million in school funding, commissioners said Wednesday.
Warren Mackey, chairman of the commission’s Education Committee, said commissioners and school board members who met Monday night threw around too many talking points and did not have enough substance. However, the session was a “start,” he said.
More meetings would iron out details of how about $6 million in payment-in-lieu-of-tax funds should be spent.
Such agreements, often called PILOTs, are given to new businesses such as Volkswagen and Amazon in order to lure them to the area. Under the agreements, businesses don’t have to pay full property taxes for a certain number of years, but they must pay the share of property tax that is slated for schools.
The money typically is given directly to the schools and added to the district’s general purpose budget. But county commissioners passed a resolution two weeks ago that would take any PILOT money from new businesses and set it aside for school construction.