City Administration's plans for your neighborhood
Simpson (aka: Green Diamond) has been receiving a 90+% tax break on its real estate holdings under Washington’s Commercial Timberland legislated incentives passed in the 1930’s since that time. This is a gift from the taxpayers to the company who declared in bold headlines not too long ago (boasting of record profits) MOVE OVER AND LET THE BIG DOG EAT! That headline came only months after the privately held corporation succeeded in getting its real estate tax liability for its operations/holdings in Shelton Harbor reduced by about 50% whining it deserved the reduction because the market for its products had been so dismal.
More recently, Simpson has requested yet another permit extension of 5 years for their existing out of compliance hog fuel boiler incinerator located in downtown Shelton. Adding insult to injury, they’re also requesting the green light to build yet another even larger (2x) incinerator downtown…as if Shelton wasn’t visibly filthy enough already. But is the existing and proposed increase in industrial blight (the same company that brought us our very own Love Canal in the form of incredibly high levels of Dioxin contamination in Oakland Bay & Shelton Harbor) combined with the myriad tax breaks and incentives it already receives enough for the Big Dog’s appetite? Apparently not.
Simpson has now suckered the Trust for Public Lands (a national non-profit conservation group now partnering with ‘Green’ Diamond) to secure public and private funding to buy conservation easements on tens of thousands of acres it owns in Mason County–rewarding it at public expense yet again for destroying the environment, public health, the community, and quality of our lives with little or no impact on how it does business whatsoever and no appreciable benefit(s) to area residents.
Recall the GMA (Growth Management Act) already restricts unfettered development of acreage such as Simpson’s outside designated growth areas, such as Shelton, Belfair, and Allen. Add to that recollection the huge sums of tax dollars Simpson avoided paying plus the fact that were they to develop any of said acreage in the current down real estate market, they’d be required to pay back taxes for the full value of the acreage for 10 years! Now the Big Dog wants us to move over yet again so it can have its cake and eat it too.
John Dodge, a reporter for The Olympian, published an article in that newspaper on 8-17-11 titled “Forest Planned for 18,000 Acres”. Actually the number of acres is much larger than that figure, but the hits to the taxpayer just keep on coming as the Big Dog eats residents out of their homes while leaving huge piles of the results for them to eat/breathe. The details of Mr. Dodge’s article outlining this banquet for the Big Dog can be seen by clicking on the following link:
Big Dog continues eating its cake, polluting, and double dipping
Nice post on Simpson!