Readers write

DEVELOPMENT

Sembler story created unfair impressions

The recent AJC story about Sembler (“Developer asks for huge tax breaks,” Metro, May 17) created a distorted and incomplete picture of our efforts to negotiate with the DeKalb Development Authority a tax abatement for part of our Brookhaven property. Beginning with a misleading headline and using loaded words and strident and alarmist rhetoric, the story created an erroneous and extraordinarily unfair impression of our proposal that has done a great disservice to Sembler, to DeKalb and to your readers. Far from seeking a “free ride,” as your article virtually snarls, Sembler is seeking support for a project that represents a $400 million investment in DeKalb and which, even with limited development, come January 2010 will pay DeKalb over three times more in property taxes than the property paid prior to Sembler’s involvement (from $400,000 up to $1.4 million).

In its presentation to the development authority, Sembler offered a detailed and conservative cost/benefit analysis that showed that, over the 20-year life of the abatement, the project would generate over $119 million in fees, property and sales taxes. This would be a significant net gain over the abated taxes and the costs of county and school services provided to commercial tenants and residents.

We also candidly acknowledged that, given the ongoing, dismal state of our local and national economy, the Brookhaven project could not be built as quickly and completely as initially envisioned without the additional financing that would be made possible by the property tax abatement we were seeking.

However, that acknowledgement was far from Sembler saying, as the article claimed, that the project would “crater” absent an abatement. We simply and realistically put on the table the possible consequences of not proceeding with this project as initially envisioned. As we laid out the financial benefits of our proposal, we also emphasized that Sembler’s proposed abatement would not take away any taxes that the county or the school board presently collect. We seek an abatement of future taxes; taxes that do not exist today because the property is not developed; taxes that will not exist if the project is not built. Little of this information, which is clearly of vital importance to a fair understanding of this issue, made it into the article.

Jeff Fuqua, the Sembler Company

BUSINESS

Argument is dangerous

Jim Wooten opines in his May 31 column (“Owning GM is troubling,” Opinion) that government intervention in the business affairs of General Motors is troubling. He quotes the opinion of Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) that aiding GM is tantamount to socialism. What Wooten fails to mention is that Shelby comes from a state that is heavily invested in foreign automakers such as Nissan. Also, Michigan is traditionally a blue state, while Alabama is red. Wooten is making a political argument that suits his side of the aisle, and has the potential to damage the other. Trying to couch it as an argument purely about business ethics or government interference in the free market is disingenuous.

Charles Summers, Duluth