 We've got a very robust discussion with all of our experts at the last meeting, Dr. Gunn-Logsden, Dr. Walters, and Charlie Terini, our legislative advisor. Today we'll get started with the official agenda in just a second, but I want to take a minute and welcome everybody. I think one of the things your new city council is very committed to doing is involving more people in the decision process and getting more input from the general public. I think Mayor Reckerman has done an outstanding job with that so far. And really, on that note, do we call the roll here or do we just note who all is in attendance? Okay, Mr. Taylor, Stephen Taylor is online with us. Perfect. Good to have Mr. Bennett and Ms. Hughes with us in person this time. You add a significant amount of gravitas to our group, so thank you very much. One of the things that's petitioned at city council is we open with a prayer, and we're very blessed and fortunate to have Reverend McDowell as a member of our committee. And unfortunately, I'm going to ask the mayor to pray for one of the two certain things ceases to exist anymore in Columbia, and that's death and taxes. So, bless this petition. I mean, thank you, Reverend. Before we get to start with the agenda, if anybody on the committee has any comments they'd like to make before we get started, I'll give you an opportunity. Scotty, James, Billy. I see a good turnout. We're going to begin with Dr. Gunn-Logsdon. I think one of the things we spent the time on last time was looking at how a property tax modernization and lowering the business taxes could be done in Richland County. And our mission has been, or our mantra has been to do this in a way that no one else's or no other taxes or fees were raised. And we specifically looked at the city last time, and I think today Dr. Gunn-Logsdon is going to show us just so we're comfortable how it would affect the school districts first and the county, and then we'll move to a public comment period. I had a lot of charts and data in the supplemental materials, and I've been asked to go through some of those this time, as well as, as Councilman Taylor mentioned, to look at some example implementation scenarios, not just for the City of Columbia, but also for Richland County and the two school districts. Before I begin, I just want to remind everyone why this is so important. The most recent Lincoln Land Institute study, which looks at the largest city in each state, has, and ours is Charleston, but we have these second lowest tax on owner-occupied residences. We have the 19th highest in Charleston on apartments across the whole United States. We have the highest differential between owner-occupied residences and apartments. And we have the fourth highest differential between owner-occupied residences and commercial properties. And that's in Charleston. The gap in Columbia is far greater, which puts us literally in the top of the nation on the differential between owner-occupied residence houses and apartments. So I also want to go through and just do a refresher of what we were talking about in terms of developing a competitive tax plan. And it's really three steps. One, we offer a credit to all other real property or to commercial and rental properties that would have the effect of reducing the assessment rate from 6% to 4%, something that the Lincoln Land Institute recommended when they did a study specifically of South Carolina. We could model this after Act 40 of 2017, which did the exact same for manufacturing properties statewide and phased it in over a period of six years at the state level. The second part of this would be developing legislation. Initially, we're thinking about at the state level to enable counties the opportunity to implement this rate credit and then also at the county level to opt in to that state-legislated rate exemption. Although since last time I've had so many people come up to me with so many different ideas on other potential legal options to do this. So I think that we have even more options to look at for that. And then finally the third step is really calculating the phase-in formula. How do we phase in that rate reduction over a period of time such that we do not have to raise taxes on anyone and it is a slow phased-in approach. So that leads us to this. We're modeling this off of Dr. Stephen Walters' plan that he had developed for Baltimore. And essentially we announce that we will have a phased-in eight-year period of reductions and we will use the first two years to start building up an escrow account. Then we will use those escrow funds, if necessary, or as necessary, to fill in holes or any revenues that we needed over the phased-in rate reduction. The other part of this is to enact a system of triggers. So if tax revenues start to come in faster, which is certainly the most likely scenario, then we would be able to advance this and it would not take a total of 10 years but could actually take place over a much shorter period of time. And the reason this is so, again, so important is here is the rental property tax disparity that you would see in Richland and I did it for Richland School District 1 and 2. The dark orange, that's how much an owner-occupied house of $250,000 would pay in a year. If you're 65 and older, you get a reduction. So that's the lighter tan color. Now, if that same house is not owned but it's actually rented out, immediately the property tax jumps up very significantly to $72.88 in Richland District 1 and $88.69 in Richland District 2. And if you're 65 and older and you're renting that place, there's no particular tax break for that only if only an owner-occupied. So this is a huge, significant difference. And it's really important because in the City of Columbia, we actually have a very high level of people who rent. 53% of the population within the city limits are renters. And you can compare that to our other peer cities that we've been typically using throughout the study. And other than Greenville, we have the highest number of renters who face that particular high rental rate. Or property tax rate. And they don't necessarily know that they face it because it's not itemized on their rental bill. But that is what's assessed on the properties in which they live. And we went through this, but we talked about the effect that these high property tax rates have on reducing the investment in these rental properties and commercial properties and which ultimately leads to reductions in population and jobs and employment. And I know we went through all of that and how we lagged that with our other peer cities last time. And I don't want to necessarily dwell on that again. But you can see that the City of Columbia and Richland County have had significantly lower population growth since 2010 than our peer cities. And then the other point is it's very interesting that we see these different dynamics going on in School District 1 and School District 2. We see a lot of people moving to School District 2 and our schools and our student population growing dramatically out there. But in School District 1, they actually see that we are losing population and losing owner-occupied housing as well. And in fact, if we look at owner-occupied property growth, you can see in Richland School District 1 since 2010, we've seen a decline of 5% in the number of units that owner-occupied property units. And in Richland District 2, we've seen a growth of 11%. And that very much shows the dynamics of our community where we have a lot of people living in Richland District 1 but commuting and working in Richland District 2 when commuting and working in Richland District 1. You can see the average value of owner-occupied homes has actually grown more in District 1 than it has in District 2. And then finally, the total assessed value has grown, and this is particularly important, the total assessed value. So all the units and their value combined has grown only 6.6% in District 1 and 13.8% in District 2 but look at that compared to our other peer cities. York has grown 40%, Lexington won 54%, Charleston 73%, and Greenville 36%. We have lagged dramatically in terms of growth. If we look at the exact same thing with commercial and rental property growth, we see sort of the opposite trends. We see that Richland District 1 has gained more commercial property than District 2 but again, and you can see that York 3 and Lexington 1 actually are very similar in terms of losing commercial property because they are sort of housing communities where people live and commute elsewhere. And then you can see our average value of our commercial properties has not grown nearly as much in some cases less than half as much as our peer cities. And then a total assessed value, again, the same thing we have seen dramatically slow growth compared to our peer cities. So the other thing that I think I was asked to go through was how might an implementation plan look over a course of 10 years. So we're starting with selected revenues of the City of Columbia. And I showed this last time and I was asked to actually show general fund revenues specifically, which is the next slide. So you can see what makes up the City of Columbia's general fund revenues. You see the middle right there per capita inflation adjusted. You can see that property tax makes up a relatively small portion of the overall general fund revenues to the City of Columbia. And then on the right hand side, you can see historic growth. And the growth is broken down by pre-pandemic and then all the way through the pandemic. So if we phase this in over a period of, again, 10 years, so we start with our current year, phase it in. First two years, we just escrow. And then starting in year three, we begin to drop the commercial property tax rate. So what you're looking at right here, so let's say all the blue is property tax revenue. The dark blue is commercial property tax revenue. And the light blue is property tax revenue from all of the other sources. And we're assuming that this is a very base case scenario where the same slow growth that's been happening all this period of time is still going to continue forward. And as opposed to announcing that we have a big property tax cut and we have a lot more investment take place, which is what is the actual likely to happen, more likely to happen. Then you also see the dark, the tan on the top is all of the other revenues. But if everything grows at the same rate that it has historically for the past 10 years, this is where we would end up. Instead of, we would end up with revenues that grow at an average of, average compounded rate growth of 4.5%. Now property tax revenues would have been up and down and then been relatively low. If the property grows at the same assessed rate, we would see a total of 1.7% annual compounded growth. So commercial property tax would decrease a little bit over that time period. But total property tax would still increase 1.7% annualized. So again, and this is the very base case, most conservative, assuming that we don't have an influx of more investment because we have dropped, provided the exemption. So the same thing can be done with Richland County. Again, these are selected revenues of Richland County and their historic growth rates over time. So one of the things, Richland County is a little different. Actually, first of all, let me just say, effectively we have the exact same type of formula for Richland County that we do for the city of Columbia. And you'll see for the school districts, we have the exact same type. We're using their specific historic growth rates for their specific property types within that, within the county. And the biggest thing you'll see is that property tax makes up a bigger portion of their revenues than they do for the city of Columbia. And the other thing about Richland County is they have some property tax flowing into the general fund. They also have property tax flowing into the non-major governmental funds, which include debt service. And it includes special revenue funds, which we fire in the library and a number of other things. So this includes all of that. And it shows you, again, we have the very same type growth. If, again, nothing changes, we have the same very base case, slow continued growth. We still are projecting 2.9% annualized compounded growth in Richland County. Yes. I just want to reinforce that. Because Dr. Walters, when he was here, and I believe he's joined us online today, has basically shown us in other cities that have reduced their property taxes to competitive numbers. They've seen fairly exponential growth and new investments in tax revenue. And you're, for these models, we're just showing the historical with no acceleration whatsoever from making ourselves more able to compete with other cities for new investments and things like that. Yes, yes. And so, and that's a good point. I mean, that's it. Thank you for pointing that out. So because the model does allow you to scale it. So what if we assume we have an extra, you know, just 5% growth per year. And then you'll immediately, just with that, you would see that all of the revenues that would potentially be, you know, abated or exempted would be immediately made up by increased revenues that are flowing in from the new development. So yes, this is, I would want to say this is the most base, you know, slowest case scenario. An additional, and when we started, and you started looking at this and Dr. Walter, Walter started looking at this a year ago in the initial committee. I think the goal at the time was a 25% reduction. What we're finding now, which I think it's just important to point out that we believe that it's fairly easy to get to a 33% reduction at the end of 10 years, which would put a 4% a net assessment rates are constitutional and you can't reduce the assessment rate. It would produce an effective rate of 4%, which is the same as owner occupied housing. That's exactly right. And if I remember it, if I'm correct, North Carolina, as an example, has a standard 4% assessment rate across the board. Yes, North Carolina does not have the variant assessment rates like we do. They have the same assessment rate for all properties. Thank you, ma'am. No, no, I should say, if anyone has any questions at any time, please just, yeah. That will equivocally change over a period of time. Does that hinge on the phase in? The amount to that? Yes. Yes. So the idea is that, again, for this very base case, the phase in would ultimately, if you go from 6% to 4%, that's a 33% reduction. That puts us on par with Greenville. That puts us, you know, better than Rock Hill. That puts us on par with all of our, you know, peers within the state. And yes, if, again, everything goes at a slow historical rate, that would take place after 10 years. Again, you know, and Dr. Walts, I wish you were here, but, you know, he has done extensive research on all of these cities throughout the nation who have enacted these tax property tax cuts. In all of those cases, the take up in investment was immediate and large. As soon as investors and developers realized that the property tax cut was indeed permanent and viable, they flooded in with new investment, which dramatically increased the property tax revenues. One of the things he said that some of the cities didn't do is they didn't necessarily build up an escrow. And so when they, and they found that they were short for the first couple of years until all of those revenues started flowing in. So, again, long base case scenario would take 10 years to get the 33% reduction. If we use the system of triggers and we get all of that new investment, I really see this speeding up and taking four or five years or maybe half the time to get to the 33% reduction. Let me just reinforce that because we have a fairly significant number of commercial real estate folks and developers with us today that, again, what you're showing here is just simply based on a historical growth rate. So if we can lower, you know, we demonstrate a firm commitment to lower our taxes. And the same thing happens to Columbia that happened to San Francisco when they did theirs. And our audiences here go out and bring that, you know, that new investment, those new hotels, those new office buildings or whatever. We can, the more we bring, the more we drive down the rates each year. In other words, it doesn't have to take 10 to get to 33. Comment, Mr. Mayor? That's what I say. So we can, we can enhance our own destiny by really selling what we're doing here and bringing in more. And that, that's going to apply to the county, to the city and to across the board. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. The last couple of slides are the school districts. So this is Richland District 1. We see property, we see their gross revenues by source since, you know, for the past 10 years. Property tax is a very large percentage of their revenues. If you look at the per student inflation adjusted, you see in 2021, it was almost $13,000 per student in property tax revenues. And then a total of 21,000 per student in total revenues that include state revenues and federal. And there's a little bit of other local revenues as well. And just for comparison, you see Richland District 1 at 20,000, 21,000 per student versus other peer districts. And then the state average is 15,259 per student. But here's how Richland 1 would look, which again is no surprise. It's very similar to the other groups. And again, for the base case, continuing the slow historic growth, even phasing this in over 10 years, we still see total property tax grow 0.6% and we see total revenues grow 1.7%. It's compounded annually. Richland District 2, a little bit different. It does not have the same percentage of property tax revenue that Richland District 1 has. It makes up, you know, far less than half of the total per student spending. Overall, Richland District 2 spends $15,600 per student and that was in school year 2021. And you can see that, again, versus all of the other peer districts and the state average. And then again, here's Richland District 2. You can see there the implementation is, again, for the slow historic growth rates is such that even if we don't see this huge pickup in commercial property growth, it would be highly unlikely, but we would still see property tax revenues grow 1.1% compounded annually and total revenues 3.8% compounded annually. So that's it in terms of, you know, just going through again more data and numbers, but I'm happy to go through even more data and numbers if anybody wants. Or if you have questions, if you want to see something different sometime. Mr. Bennett, questions, shoes? The historical growth rate, which I think is very significant as we talk through where we are and where we want to be. When I look at the historical growth rate comparatively to District 1 and 2, there is a significant increase in the data historically and proposed. Could you talk to me a little bit about that, Dr.? Yes, so the historical growth rate. I mean, we're looking really at two sets of historic growth rates. One is property values. How much have we seen property values grow historically over the past 10 years? And I've divided that out into commercial because that's where we're targeting versus all other property value. And that, we do have data that is specifically Richland 1 and specifically Richland 2. And we can see how much commercial property is in 1 versus 2. And so we use those, the growth rate of total property value to help us anticipate what might be future growth and how to calculate property taxes. The other thing that we use is we actually go into the consolidated annual financial reports and pull out specific revenues and make sure that our numbers are matching up with their numbers. So they also receive state revenues, which come from a variety of different streams. And they receive federal revenues. These have some interest revenues. And then there are some local revenues. Those are very, very small. So the historical growth rates of all revenue streams are used to identify those historical growth rates. I don't know if that answered your question, but okay. Well, growth rate, what's the parameter of time we're looking at? What's the framework? Typically, I like to use 10 years. But I will say I have, you know, with the pandemic, I have adjusted. Some have seen their revenues go dramatically up and some dramatically down. And so I have adjusted it to take the most conservative historical estimate, whether it's pre-pandemic or post-pandemic. Would you take one, just a quick second. And because so many people are with us today, just a little bit more detail on the purpose of the escrow funds and the purpose that they will serve, just so we all have a clue. Oh, sure, yes, no. And sorry, I probably just pick up where I left off last time. But so the escrow fund, so year one and two, it was, the thought was that, and again, this is, you know, Dr. Walters brainchild, so I don't want to take credit for this. But the idea is that you announce the tax cut and you have the legislation such that developers and investors know it's going to take place and they feel confident that it's not going to, they have the confidence that it's going to be a permanent tax cut. And then, but you announce it, that won't happen right now, but it's going to happen in a couple of years. So we spend, and which they know in a couple of years, they're going to have the tax cut and they start investing and developing right away. And so we spend the first couple of years simply taking the excess revenues from property tax and putting it in an escrow fund. So that when the first increment of the tax exemption or tax credit goes into effect in the year three, we have built up extra funds that in the event there's not enough coming in that we can use that to fill in the hole. Again, with triggers, if you build up a lot more and then your first tax cut you have and you still have, you still, you meet all of your spending requirements and you still have additional ones, then your trigger could come in and say, well, instead of the same incremental reduction next year, we're going to make a larger incremental reduction. And that's how we get this move to a much shorter compressed timeframe. Councilman Taylor. Councilman Taylor, can you hear me? Dr. Walter. Yes, I have a comment. It follows on the timing questions that are here. I want to, if Dr. Gunn-Logson can go back to her slide 10, I want to address some of the questions with slide 10. Mike compliments to Dr. Gunn-Logson for assembling an incredibly rich persuasive amount of data here. You guys are really lucky to have such talented economists advising you. But the one thing I want to stress here is that people might be thinking that, well, this is kind of a complicated plan. And the safe thing to do is to do nothing. And one of her tables here shows you that in fact, doing nothing is potentially disastrous. And I want to go to that slide 10. And you've heard the expression about the canary in the coal mine. I'm not sure the canary's dead here, but the canary has stopped singing. If you look at per capita inflation adjusted, essentially these are tax revenues in the city of Columbia, but they reflect what's going on with the tax base. And Dr. Gunn-Logson's data shows those blue bars in that table show that you've got a declining amount of property tax revenue in real inflation adjusted terms per capita terms. And that shows that you've got a shrinking tax base in these terms. And I've never studied any city anywhere that's been healthy with a shrinking property tax base. When the property tax base is shrinking and essentially it's a sign of ill health. It's a sign that you've got investment repellent, that you're not attracting enough new investment to bring new businesses, new affordable housing in the form of apartment and so forth. Jobs evaporate and the existing stock of capital starts to depreciate as it's not replaced and so on. This is I think the best sign, the best indicator that you've got to do something here to address this investment repellent problem because with a shrinking tax base, everything else that the government tries to do, the amount of services that it can provide, the quality of those services, the quality of its schools and so much else will decline. I invite everybody in the audience, I think Dr. Gunn-Logson will make a copy of these slides available at some point. Take a really good hard look at that and then there's lots of other data in terms of how Columbia and Richland are doing relative to other counties and areas in South Carolina. This really is a pressing problem and doing nothing really is not an option. Thank you, Dr. Walters. Excuse me. Our clerk of council, Ms. Erika, will post all the slides today. They've already been posted on the city website so everybody will have access. Thank you, Dr. Gunn-Logson. We're very fortunate to have you as a Columbia resident. We get more impressed every time you speak to us. Just so for the media in the room, Dr. Gunn-Logson will be available after we finish for any comments and she does a great job answering questions. So any of our guests here that have direct questions, I think she'll be more than happy to work with you on them. It's, I guess, time for our public comments. Does anybody has any questions? I will call our most illustrious two-time director of the South Carolina Department of Revenue and renowned tax lawyer, Mr. Bernie Maybank. Thank you. We've got a handout. We'll hand out to you. Andrew, if you'll give them the handouts there. I've got a paying client, 1130, so I'm going to speak for my three minutes and shoot. Andrew, will you give them the handouts here? So we have some handouts for you. And, Bernie, if it's okay, we'll scan your handout and put it online as well. Okay. I was going to go through my handouts. So the first thing I'll scoot into, some of what I'm going to tell you all is duplicative. You've probably heard it three or four times, but I thought it was good. The Lincoln Institute is the only ranking that includes commercial and industrial properties. There are a variety of ranking, 50 state rankings for residential property, but Lincoln Institute is the only one for commercial and industrial. They look at the largest city in each state, which for years is Columbia. It's now Charleston, and they've now shifted to Charleston. They also look at one rural town, which has always been Mullins. When they looked at Columbia, Columbia has the highest property taxes in the entire United States on manufacturers. They've now shifted to Charleston. So the first slide shows you where the problem is. Urban primary resident in Charleston, where 53 is the lowest property taxes in the country because they use the largest city in each state. Then they also do Washington DC, Chicago, and New York. Charleston is 52nd. So the tax rate is 52nd. The tax bill is 46th. It says tax rate. That should be tax bill. And so it's the next lowest property taxes on primary residents in the entire United States of the largest cities in each state. And that shifts the property tax burden over to everybody else, primarily commercial, because manufacturers typically will get incentives. The next slide is commercial property tax rankings. If you look at Charleston was 27th in the country. And to repeat, 53rd is the lowest. Number one is the highest. By contrast, North Carolina was 51st. So if you're competing for a project in York or Lancaster, one of those counties, you're competing against the 51st, almost the lowest property taxes in the country on commercial. The next slide, Chicago and Aurora. That was in Chicago's newspaper today. So I just put it in there. You will see Charleston is listed on there on high commercial property tax rates. Rural, it's a lot worse. Mullen, South Carolina. Second highest property taxes in the entire United States for commercial, for a small commercial. Fourth highest in the United States for a medium and a large commercial building. So commercial property taxes are tough in South Carolina. If you look at the next slide, apartments, Charleston's 19th, where again, number one is the highest, 53rd is the lowest. Mullen's the fourth in the United States for commercial property tax rates on apartments. Then, the river really hits the road. If you look at the taxes on commercial versus primary residents, South Carolina is the fourth highest differential in the country. Last year we were second, but we've actually improved a bit. So if you had a $300,000 primary residence home and a $300,000 law office, that tax differential is the fourth highest in the United States. If you look at apartment versus primary residence, South Carolina is the highest in the entire United States. And that's got to be a racial component to that if you assume African-Americans rent more than Caucasians. Number one in the country and the property tax differential between apartment and primary residence. The main reason I wanted to come today was to refute the notion that it's the city of Columbia's taxes that are causing the problem. Now, when you get your tax bill, it's combined. Going to have the city, the county and the school district, Fitz News did a screed against the city of Columbia about a year ago. I sent him a link to email how wrong they were. But the taxes for the city of Columbia are only 15% higher. The millage for the city of Columbia is only 15% higher than Charleston and Columbia. The differential is the county is 227% higher. Richland County is 227% higher than Charleston and Richland County is 213% higher than Greenville. We've given you 21 through 2017, so you can see it there. School district one, the tax differential, 218% higher than Charleston. School district two, 287% higher. School district three is 208% higher than Charleston. A little bit less than that compared to Greenville. The municipal property taxes is 115%. So the city tax is only 15% higher than Charleston and 15% higher than Greenville. And we've given you the county-based millage and the city-based millage. The county and the city today have the legal ability to lower property taxes. You can do it on existing ones, but you could do it on principally what they do for every manufacturer. Every month, Richland County gives a property tax incentive to a manufacturer. And so that's called a multi-county business park with a special source revenue credit. So the special source revenue credit is usually expressed in terms of a percentage, doesn't have to be, but it usually is. So a 50% special source revenue credit is a 50% reduction of the tax bill. The county does that every month for manufacturers, not 50% of course, but every month they give a special source revenue credit to a manufacturer. Many of the commercial projects in Richland County are larger, have a larger capital investment than the manufacturer does. Now, the manufacturer has a lot of jobs that commercial typically does not accept through their tenants. So you have the legal ability today to lower property taxes in Richland County. The county passes the ordinance and the city has to consent to it. So the county's already done this twice. Student housing, Martin Moore pointed out he had a very large student housing project. He pointed out the tax rate versus Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, Tallahassee, and a couple of other university towns. And so the county agreed to give a 50% special source revenue credit, 50% reduction of the property tax bill. You had to meet the student housing ordinance, which is expensive. And you had to have, I think it was a $65 million minimum capital investment. In return for that, your property tax rates were cut in half. It's flown by a lawsuit against that saying that was unconstitutional, that that incentive should be limited to manufacturers and both the circuit court and the court of appeals rule. And I favor, I represented the city in that. That's sunset and so that's student housing ordinance. So what they did is the county passed a resolution saying you build a student housing project, you meet the requirements of the student housing ordinance and your $65 million will give you a 50% special source revenue credit. The city passed a resolution saying they would do the same thing. The county currently has it for public infrastructure. Commercial buildings, you can get a 50% special source revenue credit, cap at your public infrastructure expenses. Now public infrastructures, public road water and sewer, the great majority of them done in the city of Columbia don't need that. But it don't have any need for public infrastructure because it's already there. But that is the county council today. My obsession is with worker housing, not section 8 housing, worker housing. And the city of Greenville and Greenville County Council gave us a multi-county business park, 50% special source revenue credit for beautiful eight-story building in downtown Greenville that had 25% worker housing. It's not an honor code. The special source revenue credit was revoked if they didn't comply with that. The definition of worker housing varies. Y'all can set what worker housing is, but the housing authority publishes those statistics annually. So that is something to think about. So what you would do if you wanted to encourage worker housing, you would get the county to pass a resolution which is non-binding, but says if you build an apartment complex that costs over, say, $25 million and 25% of it is dedicated to worker housing, we'll give you a special source revenue credit. So you can do that today if it's in the city so you would have to consent to it. So as a student housing, you would have both city and the county to pass a resolution saying we will do it. I think by three minutes is up. Do we have time for any questions? The bottom line is that the city's millage is not higher. It's only 15% higher than the city of Greenville and the city of Charleston. It's the county and the school district millage, it's higher. And of course you get the tax bill, you're going to get all three of them on there. Y'all have the legal ability today to lower property tax rates, typically done only for new commercial buildings. You would set a minimum $25 million, $40 million, and we'll give it to worker housing. Bernie, thank you for coming. This is a reference. Go ahead, Jay. One question, Bernie. So you started out by talking about how the county is driving the increase in taxes. And then we went to the two school districts over 200%. And then we talked about working housing. I think when we look at the school districts, we almost have a tale of two cities there. And there's a lot of talk already about Richland One and Richland Two. So how do you protect the kids and get to something great as working housing without throwing the baby out with the bath? It would be done only for new worker housing. So there'd be nothing there today. They built a $45 million building. Their taxes would go up, of course, dramatically up today. But they would be just paying less taxes than they otherwise would. If you hear the developers saying it's got to be true because worker housing ain't being built. The numbers just simply don't work. The taxes are so high. Worker housing, the numbers simply don't work. Section 8 housing, you get all kind of credits. Worker housing, state and federal credits, worker housing you down. With your years of experience in taxes, any recommendation on how you get the school district tax? See, their taxes are going, their tax collections are going to go up. By definition, there's $45 million, and I just randomly throw out $45 million. By definition, they're going to get taxes on $45 million more than they did the prior year, because only new buildings count. There'd be new taxes, and so they would get a significant increase in taxes on new constructions. You would agree that all those special source revenue credits and so forth really don't help small business? They don't? That we have to look at a global type reduction to help small business, owners of rental homes. Because I think what's one of the minimums just for the record on filos and small filos, what now? Well, legal minimums, two and a half million, but no county's going to give you a filo for just two and a half million. That's my point. So, for the small businesses that are growing one employee at a time, one machine at a time, we really don't have a program for them today in the state of South Carolina. That's correct. Okay. Any other questions for Bernie? Thank you so much for coming. We'll put our hands up there for anybody who wants to. That's right. And I did want to recognize Andrew Salibi, your associate, who joined with you today. Our next up, and we're going to try, Bernie gets like, because he was two terms of DOR, he got two three-minute slots. We try to hold him three minutes. Clayton Mozingo. Thank you for coming. Thanks for having me. Tough act to follow. I'll make this super brief. So I'm a second 50 communities. We're the developer and owner of Merrill Gardens and Bull Street, Senior Living Building. We've got projects in Charleston, building in Greenville, and here. And we've got a whole entire, you know, national portfolio. Our taxes for the specific property here were $522,000 this year. That ends up being roughly $5172 per apartment or $431 a month. So we have to, you know, we actually do create jobs for an owner-operator. So typically in a building, we put in, you know, we have 35 jobs. We've had to get creative and kind of change the structure in our buildings. We end up living in assisted living with residents that will impact the school system. And Charleston, our same building, which is actually bigger and has 38 more units. We're paying $260 per occupied unit per month. So kind of the same math he was just doing. We've got the ability. We'd love to do more projects. We've got another phase to add on to our building, which would go from, you know, which is close to a $45 to $50 million investment in downtown Columbia. But we've got to do that. We'd probably create, right now we've got about 35 jobs. We've created another 15 to 20 jobs. We'd love to do that. We've got to figure out, you know, a path forward because with the tax rates where there are, it's very challenging to try to do that with all the other factors, construction pricing, land pricing, everything else you can put in there. So it's not just taxes. There's a lot of other factors. But this is one of the highest taxes we pay over a portfolio of about 115 properties. Just for, to repeat, Charleston, you're... Charleston, I'm at $260 a month. $260 per unit, $3,117 per apartment. Here I'm $5,172 per apartment. Just curious. Does that translate into higher rents here? Lower rents. Lower rents. Yeah. Well, just if you look at the income demographics of, you know, where your building is. So I mean, you look at your, you know, your cost of building Charleston's more expensive than Columbia, without the taxes. So when you're covering that cost on the investment, you're going to have to get higher rents in those types of markets. And our rents are probably 15 to 20% lower here with higher tax rate. With higher taxes. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. Kim Person. Is Kim Persons here? Kim Persons. I'm sorry. Rox Pollard. Thank you for coming, Rox. Good morning. I'm Rox Pollard. I'm with Collier's Commercial Real Estate. Some of my colleagues are here with us today and other colleagues from other offices in the same industry here in Columbia. I want to thank you all for what you're doing and for the public service and the time that you're committing to this because the rest of us are unwilling to do it. That's why we're sitting over here. Thank you all for what you're doing. I specialize in retail real estate. And by that, I mean shopping centers or retail buildings, which that is the one type of commercial real estate that 100% of the of the population interacts with. There's something in it, some type of retail real estate. When I look at or when we look at projects, and Scottie's in this business too, around the state, our taxes here are really obscenely high. Even between here and Lexington County, they're obscenely high. And the impact that has is on a shopping center on Forest Drive, for example. We have a brand new project, which the Beach Company built, which is a spectacular project on the landscape in Columbia, South Carolina. And then a project right next door that Lowe's Food occupies. It's also a spectacular project. Because the Beach Company project was new and has new investment, and to Mr. Mozingo's point, new building receipts for what they paid, their taxes are over twice as high as the property that shares the same parking lot with them. So that is an uneven playing field for those commercial developers that want to bring those type of projects to the city of Columbia. And it gets far worse than that. If you look at small buildings that occupy out parcels on shopping centers in the city of Columbia and Richland, these prices, their tax rates can be as much as $10 or $12 per square foot, as compared to the same building in the Myrtle Beach Market where the taxes would be $3 or $4 per square foot. So from the standpoint of developers and investors and where they want to spend their money, obviously they're not going to choose to do that in a tax oppressive environment like we have here if they can expend those same dollars in other markets within South Carolina. And we are fortunate. South Carolina is an in-migration state. We saw that in the last census. We have a lot to be proud of and a lot to be thankful for. But to Mayor Rickman and Councilman Taylor's platforms as they're running, we have to equalize and level our playing field to attract those businesses. I want to do that more than my three points. This occurred to me. I'm from Greenville like Scottie is. And in the last week I was in Greenville, Columbia, Charleston and Myrtle Beach all within a few days of each other. And as Daniel said many times in his campaign, there are cranes and growth and building going on everywhere until you drive back in from any direction from Columbia. We have one crane that's on a student housing project. And we're glad to have that. We are the most horizontal city in the state of South Carolina, maybe in the southeast because we don't have that growth. So is that my time? Anyway, what I was going to say, I'll close out. What occurred to me most simply stated is Columbia is a not-for-profit economy. Because most of our jobs are at a disproportionate amount or state, federal and local governments, which are good jobs and stabilizing jobs, that's not a growth industry. It's not a for-profit industry. And it's not where those people that are renting from Mr. Mazingo can pay at least what they're paying in Charleston or more. They can't rent all those apartments that are being built in Greenville. So although what we're doing here, what you are doing here, hopefully will lead to that for-profit economy, one that has where we can keep those young people that are graduating this weekend from the University of South Carolina. Thank you, Mr. Pollard. We appreciate you coming. Ms. Donna Green, welcome, Ms. Green. I'm Donna Green. I'm a small business owner. I purchased a property on Divine Street in 2008, and I have sold that property, but I wanted to give you just a little bit of insight as to what I experienced there. And it was a house down in the commercial part, $150,000 house. My property taxes were $14,000 a year. And what I experienced was that properties around me had ownership, long-term ownership, and they had tax caps. And so the people on either side of me were paying a third of what I was paying in taxes. The assessment thing, when the assessment value took over in 2007, you buy a property and you get zapped with it. I paid, my very first year, I paid twice what the person I bought it from. And I just wanted to say that in that I saw a huge inequity in property. The 11 years that I was there, I saw over 40 businesses close. I would write them down every time one closed. And many of those buildings stayed vacant for a long, long time. And, you know, anyway, I did a little, and if I lived there, my taxes would have been $3,500. And because I didn't live there, and I lived in Lexington, I couldn't vote on anything that affected my property or my business. Anyway, the tax cap thing, I understand all that, but when it can only raise a certain amount and people own their property for 20 years, they just kind of get locked into a gradual increase. But then if you sell that building, all of a sudden, you're zapped. Anyway, I don't know if you want to... Sure, please. You'll give that to Mr. Palin. And let me say thank you for coming. I tell you, I think, you know, I built a... We kind of get ignored. Well, I would just say to you, I was very fortunate to build a business in Columbia myself. And I do think, like Mr. Maybank was talking earlier, there are all kinds of programs for big businesses. But $14,000 a year property tax on a small business, a lot of working capital you could use to grow with, isn't it? Well, not this business from someone 16 years ago when I was on Rosewood. I believe that the best way for me to grow my business was to own my property. I downsize my business and I'm now in Huntington. Well... But the thing is, is that when you own your building and you operate your business out of your building that you own, you are not generating any kind of revenue. And to me, that... You know, when I look at who's next door to me, who's renting all their spaces, they're at least generating revenue. I wasn't generating any revenue and you can't even deduct your mortgage payment and all that. So you kind of get double whammy. Ms. Green, it'd be great if you'd give a plug to your business because it is small business week and we want to promote small businesses so everybody... Southern pottery. And I actually, in my transition move, I'm sorry to say that my gallery kind of went away and now I just teach classes. Well, I missed the gallery. There were a lot of Mother's Day presents that I bought there. But you know, especially with Mother's Day coming up, right? But it's... I felt like I got double whammy with the fact that I don't get the same deductions that a renter gets, but I don't generate any revenue. Well, thank you for... I mean, every small business in Columbia thanks you for coming today. Matt Poindexter? And let me ask you, if you would, when you come to the podium, adjust the microphone to where we can make sure we hear and record what you say and if you would state your name and the company that you're with. Sure thing. Good morning. My name is Matt Poindexter. I'm with Profit Dixon Partners based in Charlotte, North Carolina. In preparation to speak with you today, I dug up and memorized an email that I received in August of 2019 which I think is very relevant here. Memorization is not my strong suit, but I think I'm going to get this right. The email read, hey Matt, that's me. Hope you're well. Property taxes are too high. We're a pass. Thanks, Kevin. So let me start with that. So who's Kevin and what was he responding to? Kevin was responding to two investment memorandums that I had sent him a couple of months prior to that in kind of the middle of 2019 for a project now known as a benefit of Bull Street which we're developing currently in the Bull Street district. Kevin is a managing director for a multi-billion dollar private equity real estate investment fund that specializes in multifamily investments throughout the country. We've worked with Kevin on multiple deals. They're very savvy and disciplined investors that dig into deals all across the country and look at things down to the dollar that's spent in terms of projections and performance. So my name, again, Matt Poindexter with Profit Dixon Partners, we specialize in multifamily development throughout the Southeast, primarily in the Carolinas and Tennessee. We've done an excess of about a billion dollars over the last 10 years. The benefit of Bull Street project, even though Kevin passed on this deal, did end up getting capitalized and financed. We're under construction now, which we're very excited about. But the only reason it was able to get financed and approved was ultimately because we were one of the first projects to qualify for the City County Public Infrastructure Tax Credit Agreement, which afforded us a 50% reduction of our property tax bill over the next 10 years. Without that, this project would not have started. It's a $67 million project that required $24 million of equity. So now that I've shared that, let me really drill down into the numbers and try to quantify what the taxes are comparative to what we see in other markets. My assumption in about a year and a half ago, on what our per unit taxes might be here in Columbia, which I'm very fearful I've under assumed at this stage, given some of what I've heard today, was $4,781 per unit upon completion. So lock that in your mind, if you would, $4,781. I've got five projects in other southeastern markets that are very similar in scope, scale, size, and quality to what benefit Bull Street will be. And I'll share with you those tax amounts for each of those deals. Two projects are in Nashville, Tennessee. Their per unit taxes or projected taxes, based on 2021 assessments, were $2,859 and $3,582. That's 50% and 30% less, respectively, comparative to what our projection is for Columbia. I've got one project in downtown Greenville, South Carolina. Per unit taxes were $3,143, 41% less than what we project they will be here in Columbia. I've got two projects in Charlotte. Per unit taxes for 2021 were $2,751 per unit and $2,354 per unit. That's 54% and 68% less than what we're projecting for here in Columbia. So there's a trend there that's developed. Property taxes are by far the largest operational expense for any multifamily community. It's a massive driver as to whether or not an investment opportunity works. Our company, sadly, is not currently pursuing a new opportunity here in Columbia. We'd like to change that. However, we can't do so unless the operational expenses are lower, specifically the property taxes, because currently they're far higher than what we see in any of our other markets. Any questions? Bill, if I'm the owner. I think Dr. Gunn-Lagason, your theory on the growth is that the traditional growth, but that this change in the tax base would accelerate the growth. And so you've said, basically, kind of said that. I'm just curious from everybody out there what you think the growth would be on it if we did lower the taxes, where if you predict that we would have higher growth and we'd be able to use some of those triggers to get the tax rate down quicker. Great question. It's hard for me to quantify citywide how that might be impacted. I can tell you from our perspective, if we heard that a tax reduction had been put in place that would get us in line with other markets, we would immediately begin a site search for a new multifamily project here. Most of our projects are $50 million up. We go anywhere up to $150 million. We've never done a one-off deal in a market and not come back and do a second deal. I don't want Columbia to be the first case where that happens, but that's really what we would need is some kind of break on the property taxes to do so. Thank you, Matt. And I just want to just repeat, what I think I heard you say, had it not been for the discount, you wouldn't have been here to begin with. Right. And if we don't fix this, there ain't going to be a number two. Sadly, I think that's the case for us at least. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Mr. Howe, Stevens. Howe's another locally built small family business. Thank you for coming today. Thanks for having me. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Councilman, members of the committee. Just two things. Do your best. Try to be even with the small guys. I think you've already mentioned that you're doing that. We have a commercial property owner in the, property in the Vista, and we've had that for a long time. And of course, you know, nobody likes taxes, but we want to just be treated as well as we can. Secondly, we did at one time, we live in Melrose Heights and have in the same house for about 26 years. And we bought a quadruplex behind our house that had been run down a little bit. So we thought we would invest in that. We found out that we cut in the forward to have somebody else manage it because of the taxes. And certainly putting any kind of money and prove that place just made it like, we can't do this. So I think there are lots of small property owners around town who maybe there's some special things that can be done to get them to put money back into their properties. Maybe special breaks for small investors like that. I know Billy would know more about that than most of us, but just want to put those two words into you and appreciate what you guys are doing. Thank you Hal. We appreciate all you've done for Columbia and I do think you raised a great point that taking and fixing up and making neighborhoods look better sometimes and we forget that rental homes and apartments are classed the same way as commercial buildings. And so it's almost like you're punished double for the property tax on your improvements and the differential in the rate. So thank you for bringing that up. George McCutcheon. Hey George McCutcheon, Wilson Kibler, Commercial Real Estate. Appreciate everybody's participation in this. A lot of guys in the room from our industry and was talking with a client yesterday and he didn't want his name necessarily to be mentioned because he's pretty well known. But he said his father told him that taxes used to be one month's rent. He said now there are three sometimes more months' rent. So from an investment standpoint it makes it very challenging to make it worthwhile to want to invest here. Fortunately the economy is pretty good right now. We've got some good development going on in the industrial area and other areas. But there are people who want to be here want to invest in the Columbia community. We've got a good thing here. So let's help them make their numbers work because it all comes down to that and they'll want to be here. And the other thing we were talking about is how these other communities are able to afford to have much lower taxes because they've got so much investment. When we compare ourselves to Charlotte and the other stuff we were talking about we were like, well, daggone. No wonder. Their tax base is growing at a much faster rate than what ours is. So thank you all. Thank you George. Appreciate you. Any questions or anything? Brad Davis. Mr. Davis with McCory Construction. Oh, you signed up. Well let me just let me. And Brad knows our taxes are too high. Can I just tell you a comment? Because I was fortunate enough to come here Daniel will speak at their office before the election. I remember him say, I asked him, I said, how's business? He said, we're booming. He said the problem is we're not booming in Columbia. Most of our business is in other parts of the state. And I'm quoting you correctly on that. And I think that's an important thing for us to kind of be thinking about. I use the example of student housing. Think with me for a second. Five, six years ago that product didn't exist here. They came with a 50% tax credit program to reduce the property taxes by 50% for 10 years. And in five short years, it became the largest payer of property taxes in the city of Columbia. It just makes me wonder if it has that kind of impact on a specialty thing. What would it do for the small business growth in our city? I think it could be absolutely remarkable. And I'll just tell you, I served as the secretary of commerce when Bernie Maybach was the head of DOR. I'll never forget when we did the orientation at the coordinating council, they asked me what I thought when I got finished. I said my only regret was being born here instead of moving here from somewhere else. Because the folks that come here get the rewards from the state when it comes to taxes. Our own local guys and gals that are building the businesses from the ground up. I mean, let me tell you, the days of recruiting corporate headquarters they just don't really happen. If we want more corporate headquarters in Columbia, we got to grow our own. We got to see our small businesses like house become big businesses. And that's what the genesis of all this discussion is about. Mr. Mayor, you had a comment? You know, I just wanted to take a minute because I think it'd be great for us to get a show of hands in here. But if we modernized the tax structure, levelized it out, which means every individual owner's big players, everybody's on the same. We root, get it down to owner occupied 4%. How many of y'all, especially you commercial guys in development, have investors lined up or willing to invest more money right now? I'm just curious. I mean, it tells us our case. I mean, everybody who comes to the city, I don't care if you're a small guy or if you're a big guy, taxes are the number one hindrance of growth. And you've served the numbers here. The numbers that we're exaggerating, these are real numbers that have backing behind it. And it's why we're not being competitive in the nature. And that's why if you look at the capital city, similar to us in the southeast, have all had double digit growth and we've had single digit growth and low single digit growth and taxes are a number one issue. So we have to work together. But I do see this. I mean, we're hearing it. We're going to hear it probably for the next four speakers are going to tell us the exact same thing. We're going to create an environment that's competitive in Colombia that affects everybody from workforce housing to home ownership opportunities to affordable housing, which we need. We're 6700 units short right now in capital investment. And it's coming to South Carolina one way or another. We just need to be primed to accept it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chuck Sally. Oh, my friend. Chuck, you're up next. The next issue today is that we got small businesses that are suffering because of our tax structure. We've got communities that are suffering because of our tax structure. It's good to have all of these fine developers in the room today. Thank you all so much for all that you do for the city of ours. But there are communities and places where generational and it's a redundant issue for me. Generational wealth. I think this gives us a unique opportunity to start this process where each of us, whether it's the homeowner, whether it's the small business owner whether it's the homeowner, whether it's the small business, whether it's the developer, the real estate person, it gives us an opportunity to not only expand our city, but it also gives us an opportunity to expand the wealth base within our city. Say what you will or may. This conversation today is the kind of conversation I think will not only help the $14,000 tax bill you've got on your place or the issues that Hal Stevenson raises or the other issues that are voluminous as it relates to small businesses. There is a wealth issue and a wealth concern that sort of undergirds this conversation. And if we don't look at it in a very proactive way, we're going to find ourselves in a quagmire. And that quagmire is simply going to be show me the money. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman McDowell. Chuck, floor is yours. Thank you, Chair. I guess I just wanted to say that I wanted to say first of all, I applaud y'all very much and say that you're on the right track because anything we can do to make property taxes more fair in this city and county and state we need to do. You know, the debacle that we got into in property taxes was really started with Act 388 when we essentially changed one of the fundamental rules that founded this country and that's taxation without representation. So what we did was we allowed, we took all of the school taxes and operating taxes off of the residents, the people that actually were being served by those schools. And before that happened, they actually decided how much they had a referendum and a vote decide how much they could pay to do that. And when they changed it all of those people had no reason to not spend as much money as they possibly could and they did because the people that were paying for it didn't have a vote. The businesses that were paying for it weren't able to vote and say, no, you know, you can't raise my taxes 300%. You know, you need to scale back this bond. The bonds just didn't happen. So now when you look at high growth areas like Richland District 2 where the millage rate is approaching 600 mills, if it keeps going it'll be a whole number. You know, in the next decade. And so, you know, if you don't have a way of checking that then, you know, you can't, you're going to have, the growth is going to go, going to continue to go down and the only, and the only way that we're doing that in my business right now is by getting special source revenue credits and free and lieu of tax agreements for all new development. If you got to do that every single time just so that you can do a deal then there's something in the system. And so I applaud you all for this. There was a way that the city of Columbia could actually have an agreement where everything that got developed in it had some type of tax development credit, special source revenue credit or some other kind of credit so that you could show you would have more people developing inside the city limits of the Columbia than you would in the county. The county might realize, hey, look at the city of Columbia. They're actually, their development is growing and ours is shrinking. Why? Because they're providing a tax break for development. And it's really not a break, it's just taking less money. It's taking less money from the businesses that are paying those taxes. And, you know, people think that developers are paying taxes or that they pay taxes and that's simply not true. The businesses that are renting from those owners are the ones that pay the taxes. Whether they're paying it directly, whether they're paying it as a reimbursement for operating expenses or whether they're paying it as part of their rent, they're the ones that pay those taxes. Thank you, Chuck. Any comments and questions? Mr. Andy Walker? He had to leave. Quinn Brown. All right. Mr. Stephen Gilchrist. Mr. Chairman and Mayor, thank you all on the committee for having us today. I've got to run in just a minute so I'm glad Quinn Brown put his name on the list so I can speak. I'm Stephen Gilchrist. I'm the chairman of the South Carolina African-American Chamber of Commerce. I represent over 15,000 minority and black-owned businesses in South Carolina. 900 of which exist right here in Columbia. And I just want to thank the committee for your work on taxes and the tax structure in our city. We did a survey about two years ago with our members to find out what were some of the pressing issues as it relates to small business and minority businesses, black-owned businesses in the state. And there were two issues that actually happened in the first place. The first one was access to capital and the second one was higher taxes. These two things were issues that these folks felt like were barriers to ensure that they were able to stay in business. And, you know, I often talk about since the pandemic that we lost 41% of our businesses in the chamber due to COVID. We didn't lose entrepreneurs but we lost a lot of businesses that had to close. One of the concerns that we have going forward is that we don't want the tax structure within our communities across the state to become another pandemic for small businesses. You know, the 4% and the 6% rate, this is something that we've looked at quite a bit here. I'm a former county administrator so all this stuff is interesting to me when it comes to these numbers of other things that often gets that doesn't get discussed when we're talking about these tax rates when we talk about 4% versus 6% particularly for small business people they see that as a 2% step. Not what it actually is in terms of 4% versus 6% and the amount of money that equates to particularly if you own multiple dwellings and you're paying taxes on that stuff. So why do I bring that point up? I think it's important to make sure I remember when Richland County passed their penny sales tax and we had a conversation with a lot of our businesses here in Richland County and we said, so what do you think about that? And a lot of people said, well it's just a penny but it wasn't a penny and I think some oftentimes semantics of what we talk about particularly as it relates to taxes is something that I would encourage this committee to work with partners like our chamber and others who can help educate small businesses that don't really get an opportunity in participating forums like this to be able to understand exactly how they're being impacted by this work. So my chamber we have 10 our chamber represents about 90% of businesses that are 10 people or less and I often talk about the fact that of those businesses 70% or mom and pop and the other 30% of mom or pop and so the reality of that is this is what we're dealing with and why we think it's so important that what you're talking about and what you're doing in your work with regard to the tax structure is so important. One thing that I wanted to and I'll say this and I'll take my seat one of the things that I wanted to just put on the radar screen when I looked at the numbers particularly as it relates to school districts I was curious whether or not the bond rating was because if we if we have a factor the bond rating into those discussions that's another conversation and I think Chuck just mentioned the fact that in Richland School District 2 the military is somewhere around 600 mills that is extraordinarily high. And the reality of that is until we begin to look at some way of minimizing the impact of bonds we're going to continue to see that kind of thing in our local government. So anyway, thank you for the opportunity to come and share this perspective. Thank you Stephen. Yes sir councilman. One of the interesting things of course is that the number of minority businesses that sort of folded during the last two years did I hear you say 41% 41% in our chamber, yes sir. The two areas of course that were a part of the conversation of course was access to capital and of course taxes. Yes sir. Excuse me. I can understand the impact particularly African-American minority businesses that sort of weighted down those two initial points. Yes sir. One of the things that I think particularly important for us is that if we're going to look at a tax structure that is going to be vital and implemented in such a way particularly with minority communities, African-American communities it has to be so structures where those two ingredients that you initiated talked about initially be a primary part. Yes sir. Of whether it's the educational piece, whether it's the networking piece but it has to grow and has to be in such a way that our historical data. I keep going back to that because I think it's important that we understand the historical data comparatively with the growth of the African-American community and minority business person. Yes sir. I think that's an excellent point councilman and I certainly think that any time we have the opportunity to make sure that we're educating business people in that regard is something that we should consider so thank you for bringing that point up. Thank you Stephen. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Last speaker Jim Morris. Alright. How about that? Jim was holding everybody from lunch and I know who would like to do that. Let me comments from the committee. Ladies first. Anything? Mr. Bennett. Sir. Mayor. I deal with small businesses I've worked with HAL before so one of my main considerations on here is for small businesses I mean I think on my commercial friends out there I'm excited about that but just helping the individuals the landlords and ones and twos is a great help but I had an owner email me last night and if I can read this real quick it's short he said it's Arnold Nurek he said growing up in Brooklyn I became more of a rent control it was a lifesaver for low to middle income families 15 years ago I became involved in the residential rental business I believe I could provide good housing alone middle income tenants and earn a reasonable income on my investments. Unfortunately property taxes amount to 25 to 35 percent of my rental income. The landlord coupled with other expenses forced me to increase rents beyond our tenants means and all he pays I believe tenants would greatly benefit by gradual reduction in property taxes if property taxes could be reduced it would certainly help low to middle income tenants. He said that to me last night but I think that's an important part too what we're doing today. Reverend. I think we received several emails rather than read them all into the record while you just post them online with the or put them in the file because I think you receive a dozen or more probably okay just again I just say that just so everybody understands that there were a lot of more interest than what's here that we're unable to be with us today I want to really kind of close with a couple of three things so our guests kind of understand the process that we're we're under. Mr. Bayback said it best earlier I mean the county really is who controls your property tax I think I think what we have at the city level is is a group of us that understand because we're in the city center we don't see those cranes in downtown Columbia that you see in Charleston or Charlotte or Greenville or Nashville somebody told me in Greenville today they complained that the cranes are blocking the view of the mountains they got so many of them. So we've taken the lead to find you know to find the solution and that's and I think we're there and I think our next meeting which will be on May the 19th at two o'clock in the afternoon will probably be our final meeting I think Dr. Gunn-Logsden, Dr. Walters and Charlie Terini will bring our final final conclusion and the plan that you've seen outlined today and our plan is to and Charlie let me just back up Charlie will probably outline a bit on how we have to accomplish it from the process it will require we think it will require some legislation from the General Assembly I don't think there's anything egregious that we're going to be asking for these are local taxes there is no negative or positive fiscal impact to the state general fund except for new investment that we that we collected generates new jobs and new sales taxes new withholding taxes and so forth so what we're doing I think we'll have a significant and a cost benefit analysis a significant positive fiscal impact on the state which I think is good and then we will hand our plan off to our mayor who's a businessman by trade and ask him to gather together our county council leaders our school board leaders it's good that we have Mr. Bennett with us who's the president of the chairman of the Midlands Business Leadership Group because we need the business community involved and like I say and reach the consensus there to move forward I think with a special legislation that we need I thank all y'all for coming today I think for us to move our community better more citizen involvement like this more business involvement like this it's critical and crucial I mean when I look out here and I see I see I see folks who are making it happen in Columbia and and when you tell your elected leaders that it ain't happening it means it means more than just the inertia of it so again thank you Mr. Mayor do you have any comments before we adjourn excuse you made a motion to adjourn didn't you and Mr. Bennett seconded all in favor say aye thank y'all for coming