The Pas extends Tolko tax incentive to potential buyer, mayor confirms

The town of The Pas is extending a tax incentive initially offered to Tolko Industries to a potential buyer for the town's paper mill.

Mayor Jim Scott says the town's council voted to extend the offer, which would see the buyer granted three years of tax breaks, at a meeting this week.

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"They [potential buyer] had a bunch of things that they were looking for in order to locate and come here and work here and that was one of them and we decided to get moving on it right away," Scott said Saturday.

Tolko confirmed earlier this week that an unnamed international buyer had put forward a letter of intent to buy the paper mill, which was scheduled to shut its doors in early December and take more than 300 jobs with it.

The offer would see the buyer given three years of municipal taxes plus debentures in the form of a grant that works out to about $460,000 per year, Scott said.

He said the incentive hinges on three conditions:

• That the buyer keep up on its property taxes. The buyerwill pay property taxes and the town will grant the money back;
• That a product for sale is produced at the mill and;
• That company representatives meet with town council annually to summarize the previous year's operations and give a forecast for the upcoming year.

The town offered Tolko a similar incentive but the company turned it down.

A Tolko spokesperson said Saturday that the company is still negotiating the potential sale with the buyer. Still, the news has Scott slightly optimistic.

"I've gone from being cautiously optimistic all the way up to somewhat optimistic," he said. "There's a lot of things that need to happen over the next little while to make that happen."

"I'm feeling pretty good but there are, at this point, no guarantees."