Foxconn area residents worry about homes
MOUNT PLEASANT - About 100 people, concerned about how their homes will be taken for the massive Foxconn project, turned out Wednesday to pepper negotiators with questions as the village prepares to exercise eminent domain power.
Many appeared to be owners of homes and relatively small lots who, unlike owners of larger tracts of farmland, were not approached about granting options to purchase their property.
Over the past few months, owners of farmland have been offered $50,000 an acre — several times the previous going rate for agricultural land in the area — as real estate brokers worked to assemble a site for a $10 billion, 20-millionsquare-foot manufacturing complex that Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn Technology group says could employ 13,000 people.
“Are we going to be getting four times the (value) like the farmers?” one woman asked.
Peter Miesbauer, one of the negotiators hired by the village, said he didn’t know.
But there is reason to think owners of small parcels will get no such multiple. Most, if not all, sit next to roads that will be widened to accommodate Foxconn, with the land taken through eminent domain.
Under eminent domain, Miesbauer said, the law requires that fair market value be paid. That can be established in different ways, but an often-favored method for appraisers is the use of comparable sales — a prospect that worried some of those gathered at an open house on the Foxconn project at the Mount Pleasant Village Hall.
“What about the hardship they’re putting on people?” one man said. “We don’t want to move.”
“Unfortunately,” replied Laura H.S. Sadler, another negotiator hired by the village, “there’s no ‘pain-and-suffering’ ” payment.
“The law just provides for fair market value,” Miesbauer added.
He said appraisers working for the village will set a value on their property. The homeowners can hire their own appraiser as well, with the negotiators then working “to arrive at a value that’s acceptable to both parties,” Miesbauer said.
The open house, attended by a few hundred people, came after the announcement last week that Foxconn will build its manufacturing campus in Mount Pleasant, initially taking a 1,198acre bloc of land just east of I-94 in the far southwestern corner of the village.
That section is part of nearly 2,900 acres the village, county and company will buy as part of the project, with the additional land used for construction staging, possible Foxconn expansion, and sale to company suppliers.
All told, the village and county will spend $764 million to help Foxconn build the $10 billion factory complex, which is to cover 20 million square feet and employ up to 13,000 people.
The public money will be repaid, officials say, from property taxes generated by Foxconn’s campus over 25 to 30 years.
About $168 million of the public funds would be used to buy land. Another $177 million would fund infrastructure improvements such as roads, water and sewer lines, and extending fiber optic cable. Another $116 million would pay for more police and fire protection. Financing costs would claim $175 million.
The final large chunk of public money, $100 million, would be paid to Foxconn as a development incentive. The company also stands to receive as much as 2,271 acres of land for free.
Given its size and the inherent uncertainties of business, the deal involves risk for local taxpayers. But it also includes safeguards that provide an unusual degree of protection against loss, Dale Knapp, research director for the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, has said.
Chief among the safeguards: Foxconn would guarantee that its complex would contain at least $1.4 billion in taxable value for 30 years. That value alone would generate enough in property taxes to pay off the $764 million in local costs, officials have said. Any additional development nearby — something officials aren’t counting on in the project plan but clearly are expecting — would provide additional tax revenue that could help pay off the costs more quickly.