WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Last night Monroe County Council members approved a ten year, $2.8 million tax abatement plan that everyone HOPES will keep an international packaging manufacturer in town, and its 150 jobs safe. Printpack is a packaging manufacturer, with 26 facilities in the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe. One of its plants has been on North Curry Pike, on Bloomington’s northwest side, for roughly ten years. On August 27, Printpack announced that it would close the Curry Pike plant, but would prefer to stay in Bloomington and build a new plant six times as large, with railroad access, if a tax abatement deal could be reached with the County. But even though Printpack has already begun grading the land on West Vernal Pike that it purchased for the new facility, the corporation has not yet formally made a decision about whether to stay, or relocate to Tennessee or Mexico – and there is no assurance in the plan that Printpack would hire more employees from Monroe County. Council members Julie Thomas and Charles Newmann cast the only votes AGAINST the tax abatement, and we’ll hear why in a moment, but first a Printpack executive states the company’s case.
