Cambria County commissioners met on Thursday morning to approve a repayment plan for the over a million dollars owed to Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) Fairfield in Jackson Township.
The natural gas power plant was taxed too much after an appraisal that said there was about $100 million of taxable real estate at the property. The company appealed that saying there was far less. Authorities said it was later estimated to be around just $20 million of taxable real estate.
“It was worked out with the give and take that’s supposed to work in our legal system, We’re government. We tell you that you owe taxes, you have a right to question that and appeal it and they did. Unfortunately this was a really valuable and big property and there’s some big divergences in the opinions of what the value’s worth.”
Now that the settlement has been approved by county commissioners it must be approved by a court, which will likely happen in early December according to officials.
According to the settlement, within 30 days of that approval, the county will have to pay CPV around $950,000. Authorities said that will cover about half of the payment.
County officials said in the following three years they will owe the plant around $250,000 a year.
Authorities said they may not like the situation, but they will be able to handle making the large payments.
“Yeah, it’s a tough pill to swallow, but we have 20 plus good paying jobs, We can agree to disagree on things, but now we need to move forward as county commissioners and work for the tax payers of Cambria County to make sure our budget has realistic numbers.”
This is to go along with the about $3.7 million over the next three years Central Cambria School District approved earlier in the week to pay back CPV.
“That is a large portion of our budget so the board over the next couple of months is going to have to look at ways to tighten the belt without eliminating opportunities for our students.”