Remarks by Phil Chang
312 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 6 of 13
- Play at 5:40:52
“Thank you. Yeah. And I would like to say, you know, I'm asking a lot of hard questions about tax abatement here, but, you know, I want you to understand I am very excited about this project. I am very excited about the generation of clean baseload energy and the value of that to our environment and to our climate. Very excited about the addition of, you know, this, you know, economic enterprise. uh, to our community. Um, at the same time, you know, many people in, in the community are asking, well, what is in this, what's in this for us? You know, there's say, um, a federal public land site.…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 5:43:05
“Yeah, but, you know, stays in Oregon is. But we're in Oregon. So you. So then that leads me to OK, so what are we? what are we giving in terms of tax abatement to support this very important project that we're really excited about? And what does the community get? And so that's, you know, I'm very interested and maybe in a minute here after we are done talking about the mechanics of how tax abatement works, we can turn to discussions of, you know, How the money would be used or what kind of special local allocations we might be asking for. But I'm particularly interested in that piece of the…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 5:47:10
“mean i do want to say on roads you know the way that that oregon's uh system for funding roads and most other states um is set up right now is that um people who drive generate gas tax revenue and title and registration fees and then that that's what we use to pay for roads so i mean i i would expect there's gonna be a lot of there's gonna be a lot of driving to it from the from the site as part of this process and so we are receiving the gas tax benefit directly there.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 5:48:21
“Well, we understand why we have a state transportation funding crisis right now, I think, at this point.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 5:48:39
“Yeah, I can see how one of the differences between this and other developments where we charge system development charges, for example, is that this is federal land. So we would need to think of another way to address that since we don't have the typical SDC structure. Patricia, did you have a?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 5:49:34
“Hmm. Good to know. Okay. Any thoughts on five-year red zone tax abatement in any special local conditions?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 5:52:21
“So I appreciate going and looking at what other communities have done, but you've seen one county, you've seen one county, and the needs that we have and the potential impacts, small as they might be, associated with this project are unique. I don't think any of our fellow counties are unique. Negotiating tax abatement for geothermal energy projects. We see wind and solar all over the place. So I think we can look to ourselves first. I have Commissioner DeBone just listed a couple of his initial thoughts. I have some initial thoughts and I'd like those included in whatever staff memo we come…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 5:58:09
“But that would be at the time of, that would basically kick in in like year four or five, right? No.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 5:58:28
“Yeah. So, I mean, there are going to be people employed by Quaze themselves. And that is awesome. And those requirements around those employees are awesome. And I think a lot of people were also asking about you know, the people who you will be using to build the project. And I'm, you know, I'm on those kinds of requirements. I'm sort of torn. I mean, there's a lot of things we really want to see get built and making it harder to build them is, um, It's introducing friction into the system. At the same time, the kinds of wage or benefit requirements that people are interested in seeing make a…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:02:09
“That last bullet is definitely what I was trying to get at. Again, trying to put conditions on construction contractors is tricky. My impression is that with these projects, that one of the key pieces is these complex drill rigs that nobody has those in Oregon. We can't reasonably expect a company to hunt down an Oregon contractor to do that drilling work if there's no drill rigs in Oregon.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:03:02
“Yeah, yeah. So that's why I'm kind of putting out this idea of, you know, benefits for the local building trades workforce. But, you know, I don't want to try to layer on conditions that are unfeasible, basically, or unreasonable.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:04:04
“Those companies don't just send their rig. It comes with a crew of people, right? That's correct.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:04:27
“So if you can codify or provide a written explanation of how you work the magic and you give local preference, I think that's something worth considering putting into an agreement.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:06:25
“Okay. Are there any additional thoughts at this point?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:06:57
“And we'll have assurances or reassuring information in between now and then as we see these projects under construction.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:12:14
“Yeah, that was the number I came up with, $3.736 million of tax abatement over years four and five. So, I mean, any requests for local investments needs to be far enough below that, that it's still a good deal to actually seek the year four and five tax abatement, but that sort of helps define the envelope that we're looking within. 3.8, which is- 3.736, yeah. All right, yeah.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:13:26
“Well, I mean, to your earlier question, Jen, I think we can, you know, I see no reason why we can't just start negotiations or, you know, kind of drafting of an agreement and be working on these and kind of what is the additional increment of local benefit that we're talking about? You know, what is it, how much, and which years in the interim while that's being drafted up?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:17:06
“okay so yeah if i'm if i'm tracking correctly next we should uh have uh some additional discussions about the you know these these additional local requirements um and when we can uh when we can say with some level of granularity what's gonna what's gonna be there the the rest of the application just kind of falls into place don't hold until we have it okay so you've already kind of”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:18:46
“Okay. Further thoughts? Lead with negotiations and yeah, we all need to... Let's do whatever we need to do to get to an agreed upon set of local conditions. Now, if that means, I mean, I think what we need before we get there, we do need a little bit more background, you know, on other counties. And, you know, I would like to see the ideas that were floated today kind of, you know, committed to paper as, you know, options on the menu as well. And then is there anything else?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:19:40
“I mean, I guess I would also ask Quaze, do you want to be here with us for that next discussion? Or do you want to visit after we have that discussion?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:19:53
“OK. Is that enough direction, Jen? Okay, very good. That's okay.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:21:08
“Yeah, actually, I'm just realizing now that I will be too.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:21:13
“We're going to have to wrangle that with community development department later.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:21:45
“Okay, last but not least, item number 11.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026
- Play at 6:21:55
“Behavioral health HRSA grant limited duration position extension.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 2, 2026