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Clarify PILOT Agreement

Post-Standard letter

June 13, 2006

To the editior:

Despite your numerous articles on the subject over six years, it appears many people still do not realize what the PILOT agreement grants to Pyramid Co. Would you please clarify and elaborate on the following points in future articles:

1. If Carousel were put back on the tax roll today, with no expansion or reassessment, it would owe property related taxes of at least $12.4M/year ($327M at $37.90/$1,000 of assessment), or $372M over 30 years. More accurately, $590M, assuming a long-run 3% per year inflation rate. 30 years is a long time. Local government expenses will also have risen 60%.

2. Without the expansion, Carousel would generate approaching $2 billion in sales taxes over 30 years, including inflation. Pyramid's $60M guarantee is irrelevant.

3. With the PILOT, sales taxes collected at the mall will pay off construction bonds and other mall expenses, not Pyramid.

4. The PILOT more or less requires SIDA to issue as many bonds as Pyramid wishes, effectively unilaterally enlarging the PILOT agreement unconditionally as Pyramid sees fit.

5. The PILOT agreement still requires only an 800,000sqft expansion. Why the huge subsidies to expand an already very profitable business?

6. A huge piece of prime downtown real estate, all consolidated, zoned, and cleared for development, is a very attractive target for any developer, not just Pyramid.

7. The PILOT agreement, at a reportedly 1,200 pages, seems by it's very length a mine field of legal trouble. Who, other than Pyramid lawyers, claims to have read and thoroughly understood every single clause?

Carlo Moneti
Syracuse

Published in full in The Post-Standard.