Dunkirk Planning Director Vince DeJoy said the city Industrial Development Agency is suspending operations because the county IDA is better equipped to handle its duties.
The Dunkirk Industrial Development Agency is suspending operations.
The city council voted unanimously Tuesday to make the move. Vince DeJoy, the IDA board chair and city planning/development director, said his department doesn’t have time to handle the agency’s work.
“Our department just lacks the overall capacity to manage. It’s a lot of… financial type work we truly just don’t have the capacity to do,” DeJoy said. “We have been successfully working with Chautauqua County IDA – they’re far better set up to” work on the sort of projects the city IDA handles.
DeJoy explained the Dunkirk IDA’s duties. It has “the ability to provide incentives to developers, be it PILOT payments… and also mortgage property tax abatement for projects that are basically qualified to get those types of incentives.”
The Chautauqua County IDA has the staffing and expertise to handle such things, DeJoy said.
Councilor James Stoyle asked how many employees the Dunkirk IDA has. DeJoy said zero – city planning department members handle its duties when they can.
“And that’s the problem – when we had these projects, we basically had to hire a law firm out of Buffalo…that the county IDA uses,” the planning director added.
“We’re constantly working together on some of these bigger projects. I think deferring to the Chautauqua County IDA is far better,” DeJoy concluded.