Chesterton Tribune

 

 

Tax Abatement Committee determines Addison Pointe to be fulfilling hiring commitments

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By KEVIN NEVERS

The Addison Pointe Health & Rehabilitation Center, 780 Dickinson Road, is comfortably in compliance with its hiring commitments, one of the conditions of a 10-year tax abatement which the Chesterton Town Council grated in 2006.

At a meeting Tuesday afternoon of the Tax Abatement Advisory Committee, attorney Kyle Persinger--representing the facility’s new owner, Health Care Properties LLC--reported that 160 hires were made in 2015 and that those 160 employees earned salary and wages totaling $3.765 million.

As of Friday, Persinger added, fully 167 were employed at Addison Pointe, with the expectation that another three hires would be made in the near future, and that those 170 “will be the highest number of employees the facility has ever had.”

In any case, last year’s 160 hires exceed by 40--that is, by 25 percent--the 120 which the previous owner, Long Term Care Investments II (LTCI), had committed to employing when it originally applied for the tax abatement. And the $3.765-million payroll exceeds by $565,000--by 18 percent--the $3.2 million payroll which LTCI had similarly committed to making.

LTCI made another commitment as well in 2006: namely, giving Chesterton residents preferential consideration when making hiring decisions, as much as is legal and practical.

Last year Addison Pointe received a total of 397 applications, 60 of them from persons with Chesterton mailing addresses; of those, 160 applicants were hired, 28 of them--or 18 percent--persons with Chesterton mailing addresses. For the record, in 2014 23 percent of successful job applicants at Addison Pointe were persons with Chesterton mailing addresses.

“If a non-Chesterton applicant was hired over a Chesterton applicant, it was due to qualifications and experience,” Persinger said.

Committee Member Dane Lafata did have this question for Persinger: how do you know a person is an actual Town of Chesterton resident and not someone who lives in an unincorporated township but has a Chesterton mailing address?

Persinger’s response: Addison Pointe administrators don’t in fact know.

Persinger also noted that in the transition between LTCI and Health Care Properties LLC, there was a period of time during which job openings were not being posted to the Town of Chesterton’s website--at www.chestertonin.org  or in the Chesterton Tribune. That failing will be rectified immediately, he said.

Addison Pointe’s acting administrator, Harriett Wallace, did note that Addison Pointe has, at the moment, a fairly substantial annualized turnover rate of 24 percent. But, she noted. That turnover rate is a “pretty standard” one for the industry.

Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann, for his part, told the committee that Addison Pointe is in “substantial compliance” with its commitments. Its submission to the town for renewal of the tax abatement is missing information, however, and must be completed before the Town Council can vote to renew. The committee did vote unanimously to find Addison Pointe in substantial compliance contingent on its completing that submission.

 

Posted 6/2/2016

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

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