Supervisors ponder future of Bacon Veneer TIF agreement

During Monday morning’s regular meeting, Grundy County Supervisor Jim Ross recommended that the board terminate a tax increment financing (TIF) agreement with R.S. Bacon Veneer just west of Grundy Center because the company had failed to uphold its end of the bargain.
           
“I look at it as, they violated the terms of the agreement, (therefore) the agreement is null and void,” he said. “It’s not coming back. I think it should be terminated.”
           
Fellow Supervisor Barb Smith reported that Bacon had declared bankruptcy in its home state of Illinois, and only six or seven employees were currently working at the Grundy Center facility. According to an article in the Rock Island Argus-Dispatch, the company, which first came to Grundy Center in 1980, expanded its plant here in 2002, but in 2012, nearly 50 employees were laid off locally.
           
Upon a tour of the facility, however, at least 12 employees were working, and Wayne Huseman, who’s been with the company for 41 years, said that it is now known as Best Veneer despite the exterior signage. The previous owners, as Huseman explained it, declared bankruptcy, sold the company and then bought it back under a new name, but the Grundy Center operation has been massively downsized from its heyday of nearly 100 employees.
           
“So much of that stuff goes to China anymore,” Huseman said of outsourcing. 
 
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