After starting conversations last month about a fee paid to a local economic development group, Hancock County officials continued conversations about the topic last week, with leaders from both sides agreeing there should be a closer relationship between the two parties.

At the Dec. 10 Hancock County Council meeting, representatives from the executive committee of the Hancock Economic Development Council talked with council members about potentially adjusting the fee and how much money the HEDC gets from the county.

The conversation started in November, when council members expressed concern that the amount being sent to HEDC — a total distribution of $732,186 for 2025 — was excessive and wondered whether some of that money could be sent to other entities with a greater need.

Resolutions passed in recent years by the council allow the county to impose a fee on abated properties — the amount owed is 5% of the additional amount of property taxes that would have been paid if the abatement did not exist. The fee goes up to a maximum of $100,000.

Council members noted at the Dec. 10 meeting that the HEDC budgets they received did include detailed breakdowns of each of the four HEDC staff member’s salaries. Harold Olin, superintendent of Greenfield-Central Community School Corp. and member of the HEDC Executive Committee, told council members that HEDC executive director Randy Sorrell was “by no means” the highest paid economic development director in the state.

Olin said the executive committee looks at what similarly sized counties are paying their economic development directors, and that Sorrell was paid at around average for a county the size of Hancock County. He also said there are no incentives for how many requests for information HEDC receives.

“Typically I will say those raises have been at market levels, somewhere in that two to five percent range,” Olin said. “I can assure you that nobody has paid anything that would be out of the ordinary.”

Council president Mary Noe said as she was looking over the budgets for 2024 and 2025, salaries rose from $289,000 to $341,600.

“This is why I think we’d like to see a little bit more breakdown so we can have a true picture of what we’re talking about,” she said.

Fellow council member Kent Fisk said part of the concern that started the whole conversation was the money being brought in by the fee was more than the council initially expected.

According to documents provided by Hancock County Auditor’s Office, the five percent abatement fee distributed a little over $16,000 in its first year in 2022, but rose to $225,439 in 2023. These documents estimate that in 2028, HEDC would get over a million dollars from this abatement fee, with predicted totals of at least $500,000 between 2026 and 2033 if no other abatements are approved by the county.

Fisk said some of the money from the fee should go to other avenues promoting economic development throughout the county.

“We’re all after the same thing. We’re all after the best use of money,” he said.

Olin agreed with this assessment, saying the HEDC executive committee would be agreeable to the idea of collaborating on where some of the money from the abatement fees would be spent.

“I don’t think we’re putting our heels in the sand and saying back off. I think we want this to be a collaborative effort. We all want good things for our county,” he said.

Fisk said in the future, he would like for the county council to have a better, more collaborative relationship going forward.

“We have a special county. We have a special thing to sell, and we have quite a lot going on and um, we just want to be a part of it,” he said.

Council member Keely Butrum said in the conversations she has had with executive committee members, HEDC has not made substantial increases to its budget except for adjustments due to inflation.
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