School Board Approves Trobec’s Tax Abatement

ST. CLOUD -- A local business is one step closer to building their new facility.

At Wednesday night’s school board meeting, the St. Cloud Area School District voted unanimously to approve a tax abatement for Trobec’s Bus Service to cover a gap in funding for the new site's construction.

Earlier this week the St. Joseph City Council approved their own abatement for the project. Trobec’s Vice President Bethany Schubert says now the real work begins.

These were the last big hurdles we had to go through to kind of get all of our planning in place. Now there are a couple of things we just need to finish up with the land which hopefully will be done in the next week or so, and then we will look forward to starting construction yet this fall.

Stearns County was also sent a proposal but declined to participate. Schubert says they expect construction on the new facility to be completed in time for the start of next school year.

Right now our expected start date is sometime this fall and then we are hoping to be finished by the summer of 2020, which would have us in the new facility by the fall of next year, fully operating for all of our vehicles.

The abatement from the school district is not to exceed $140,000 over the course of seven or possibly even six years. It will be in effect starting with taxes payable in 2021.