The Danbury Tax Assessor's Office asked the Danubry City Council in October 2016 to approve an ordinance allowing for abatement of personal property taxes on information technology. An ad hoc committee was appointed at that time, but the group just met last Thursday May 24th. State law allows for municipalities to abate up to 100-percent of IT personal property taxes, with no other guidelines. The Danbury ordinance would abate 50-percent of the personal property taxes attributable to information technology personal property for use in a qualified data center.
The proposal outlines certain deadlines and criteria. It also establishes that there be a $15 million minimum value for the qualifying property. The abatement would be for three years.
Praxair asked for this kind of abatement, but the ordinance can't be tailored to Praxair. Councilman Paul Rotello was concerned because there's a limited amount of industrial property in the City and he doesn't want a company to put up an empty building in order to get this abatement. He referred to it as a turn-key server farm doing nothing else.
The Committee is recommending that the full City Council refer the proposal to a public hearing and adopt the ordinance.
A Praxair representative noted that after a nationwide search in 2015, the company decided to remain in Danbury and purchased a property on Riverview Drive. At that time, they also purchased a property in upstate New York specifically zoned for data centers. The company says data centers are attractive investments, not because of the amount of jobs they bring to an area, but because they bring tangible property with little to no drain on local resources like water and electric. There's also little impact on traffic.
