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Regular Council Meeting November 16, 2015 Page 6 the agreement appeared to have been submitted to PEDC or to the City, although the abatement contract mandated that these documents be sworn to and submitted annually. He also said Gary Vest was the director of the PEDC at that time and it appears that neither he nor any PEDC employee or board member ever requested these documents throughout most of the time of the abatement, but the submission of these forms was in fact a mandatory part of the contract. Council Member Clifford said failure to submit the forms might have completely negated the contract. He said that it was only during the last year that the PEDC attempted to straighten out this problem, when they requested all compliance information under all contracts pertaining to abatements and incentives for a variety of companies. Council Member Clifford also said they requested the compliance information for all the years of the 2006 abatement contract from Paris Warehouse 107 to verify that the company had indeed fulfilled their obligations under the terms of the contract. He said employment figures were submitted for the years of the abatement by Paris Warehouse 107, and all submitted figures pertained to the 2006 abatement agreement and the company attempted to prove that they had indeed satisfied the 2006 contract requirement of 158 full -time jobs. He also said the contract clearly specified that only full -time employees were to be counted and that according to the documents submitted by Paris Warehouse 107, it appears they replaced several full -time employees with temporary employees and that appeared to violate the agreement. Council Member Clifford said with counting temporary employees, Paris Warehouse 107 was out of compliance in the year 2012 and according to the contract being out of compliance for even one year could negate the entire abatement agreement resulting in all taxes, interest and penalties being assessed. He also said it was discovered over a year ago that the percentage of taxes abated had been done incorrectly over the entire course of the abatement. He explained that the contract allowed abatement of only 80% of the taxes for the first 3 years and then the percentage of the taxes abated was to have dropped by 16% per year until none of the taxes were abated. He further explained that Lamar County Appraisal District actually abated 100% of the taxes for a full 8 years from 2006 until 2013, and that he requested documents from the Appraisal District that would justify 100% tax abatement for a full 8 years. He said a few documents were submitted, but clearly none of these documents justified granting of the 100% abatement for 8 years, and that about a million dollars in taxes were abated but the Appraisal District doesn't have any documents to explain why they applied 100% abatement over 8 years. Council Member Clifford said according to the application, Paris Warehouse 107 applied for the tax abatement February 28, 2006, and the company stated "we will be building a dock - high enclosed metal building which will be a minimum of 150,000 square feet." He also said the company was required to submit within 30 days of completion of the construction and the failure to do so would have violated the contract and negated the abatement agreement. He explained this certificate of completion was critical to verify that the company had fulfilled its requirements prior a tax abatement being granted. He also said this was so important that the contract required it to be sworn to and included a penalty of perjury. Council Member Clifford said that he had requested a copy of the mandatory sworn statement containing the initial reporting requirements but no one could find it. He said it seemed that the document may have never been submitted; that the PEDC did not appear to have ever requested the document at the time the building was completed, nor did the City of Paris request this mandatory document. Council Member Clifford