Port of Shelton ‘end run’ extends hubris & land acquisitions

Pork of Shelton Commissioner Hupp smugly leers at local officials attending pro Prison rally

Jay Hupp, a Port of Shelton  (POS) Commissioner has advanced a proposal for a ‘FTZ’ (Foreign Trade Zone) which would accomplish by government fiat what local citizens defeated (in principle) when Adage pulled up stakes in the face of community opposition. Mr. Hupp is on Youtube record lusting after the area’s natural resources “if we could just get our hands on them.”  The FTZ mechanism would short circuit citizen input and extend the POS reach beyond its current geographic parameters into the whole of Mason County where local residents who’d be affected don’t even have the option of voting their nemesis out of office. This scheme as concocted by Hupp, et ux, has been orchestrated as follows:

In a February 21, 2012 POS meeting, Commissioner Hupp identified the need to update the Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) web page to reflect current information and further explain what a FTZ is and is not.  It is not, a Free Trade Zone.  Both are very different subjects, there are no Free Trade Zones in the United States.  A FTZ is to facilitate cash flow for manufacturing operations, by postponing duty on imported materials and parts until these imports leave the FTZ and move into US Commerce.  The FTZ concept is to primary to facilitate the creation of jobs and facilitates the cash flow for the manufacturing business.

Hupp went on to explain Foreign Trade Zone 216, which comprises 13 sites and 4 counties, for a total of 2000 acres in the 4 counties.  The Port of Shelton has 400 acres of Foreign Trade Zoned real estate on two sites Sanderson Field (200 acres) and John’s Prairie (200 acres).  The concept of “alternate Foreign Trade Zoned lands” was discussed and clarified by Hupp.  

The alternate sites framework can take any portion of the 400 acres and locate that acreage any place in Mason County, as a FTZ.   How this alternate is accomplished is by the need identified (request for an alternate FTZ site), the Port would apply to the ‘FTZ 216’ [authority] to identify the alternate site.  After local [FTZ agency] approval, the State must approve the request for the alternate site.  The request is then sent for approval by the US Department of Commerce in Washington DC.

The use of an alternate FTZ opens up other ‘opportunities’ throughout Mason County.  However there would be costs associated with the alternate sites for the use and cost of the declaration of the alternate FTZ’s incurred by the Port of Shelton.

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