By Ralph Echtinaw

St. Louis City Council approved a 12-year, 50-percent tax break last week an expansion at Plasti-Paint that will add two jobs to the payroll.

Plasti-Paint is located in the city’s Woodside Industrial Centre.

The Industrial Facilities Exemption covers the $370,000 cost of the 3,400-square-foot addition. The usual taxable value for that amount is $185,000, but the IFE reduces that to $92,500 for 12 years.

The IFE now goes to the state tax commission for final approval.

The new building’s purpose is to store as many as 225 55-gallon drums of paint. It’s a big improvement over the unheated building without sprinklers that the drums had been stored in, said Research & Development Manager Richard M. Sabatovich.

Sabatovich told councilmen that the “multi-layer epoxy floor” of the facility will prevent spills from seeping into the ground.

Plasti-Paint put a 2-inch curb around the perimeter, so the floor can hold as much as 3,600 gallons in the event of a spill.

“It’s the most expensive small building we’ve ever put up,” Sabatovich said.

City Manager Kurt Giles asked Sabatovich about another Plasti-Paint expansion that is on a recently approved site plan.

“Everybody’s got their idea of how they want to use this next expansion,” he said. “But the main reason for it is all our tooling is outside. When it’s outside in winter time, and you’ve got to go out there and you’ve got parts ready to load on the line and everything’s buried under a foot of snow it’s a mess. We’ve been dealing with it for years. We want to take that area and remove everything in there; remove all the original concrete and asphalt; put up a new building and have all our tooling inside.”

That expansion will be something like 8,800 square feet in size, Sabatovich said “That’s still going forward. We’ve just got to make up our mind and decide what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it. What size it’s going to be. Hopefully in the next two or three weeks we make a decision get a size picked out.”

Plasti-Paint is expected to apply for a tax break on that addition, too.

Take our waste, please

Although the city’s wastewater treatment plant produces a “product” that is used to fertilize fields for growing crops, the city has to pay a hauler to take it away.

Councilmen approved a three-year contract last week with Michigan AgriBusiness Solutions to haul away 600,000 to 800,000 gallons of waste per year. The company will be paid $120,000 for this service.

The biosolids land application contract had been held by Nutrigro Environmental Solutions, but “this firm has been difficult to work with these past three years,” said Public Services Director Keith Risdon in a memo to Giles. “Last fall they were unable to clean all three tanks resulting in the extra volume being carried over into this contract.”

Complicating matters was Nutrigro’s habit of making the “withdrawal” in late summer, Risdon said, as that is also a busy time for the treatment plant.

Michigan AgriBusiness Solutions will make its withdrawals in the spring.

Others bidding on the job were BioTech Agronomics  and Bob Reurink. Both bids were well over the bid of Michigan AgriBusiness Solutions.

Attendance

Councilman Tom Reed was absent.