Sound Shore

The New Rochelle Industrial Development Agency will changes its policies in the coming year to better monitor the companies that receive its tax breaks or loans.

The NRIDA’s board adopted a corrective action plan on Thursday in response to an audit by the state Comptroller’s Office that faulted the agency’s cost-benefit analyses for, and job-growth monitoring of, companies that receive benefits from the NRIDA.

Among the promised changes, the agency said it will:
• Modify its Uniform Tax Exemption Policy to ensure there is complete documentation to do a proper analysis of developers’ applications for financial incentives.
• Standardize its project evaluation process.
• Improve its cost-benefit analyses and financial reviews of applications by hiring third-party consultants.
• Strengthen its verification of applicants’ employment data and their actual financial investments in the city compared with what they promised.

Councilwoman Marianne Sussman, the chair of the NRIDA’s board, described the corrective action plan as more a fine-tuning of protocols than an overhaul.

“What the audit generally found was that we did do these processes, but they were not sufficiently detailed in some instances,” Sussman said.

For example, she noted that NRIDA staffers did not conduct site visits of companies that receive tax or other benefits when compiling annual reports, although the companies’ figures were certified. Sussman said the new measures the NRIDA will take should offer some skeptical taxpayers greater assurances that the city is getting true benefits from the incentives granted by the agency.

“I’m hoping to persuade the people who don’t believe in IDAs to take a second look,” said Sussman. She said the NRIDA incentives given to the Avalon-on-the Sound project renewed downtown and led to the construction of projects like the Lofts at New Roc and the Residence Inn, which received no incentives.

— via reporter Ernie Garcia