By Julie Johansen
The Community Reinvestment Agency of Emery County met on Tuesday to adopt an interlocal agreement. The agreement is between Emery County, the Emery School District, the Emery Water Conservancy District (EWCD) and the Emery County Special Service District.
Members of the board include all three Emery County Commissioners, including Lynn Sitterud, Kent Wilson and Gil Conover, as well as Jessy Johansen from the school board, Jay Mark Humphrey, manager of the EWCD, and Jacob Sharp from the special service district. The agreement was approved and the next item of business was the consideration of a participation agreement between the CRA and Castle Solar Company.
The Emery County CRA wanted verbiage in the agreement stating that if the project ever became acquired by a centrally-assessed entity that the money forgiven in the tax incentive be paid back.
They also stated that a 35% incentive would be granted as well as another 5% if, in good faith, Castle Solar hired locally or utilized a local contractor. Adriane Bell, attorney for Castle Solar, felt that they were not ready to agree to those terms until some further study was done. This item was tabled to be discussed at the next meeting.
The Emery County CRA asked that the documents be presented to the board members one week before the upcoming meeting so that they could get legal advice and study the documents before meeting to sign the agreement.