Thursday 23 December 2010

Fiacco and crew give Mosaic a 5-year free ride


Regina Mayor Pat Fiacco and Councillor Michael Fougere
So, does a huge global multi-national corporation really need Regina taxpayers and individual home-owners to pick up the property tax tab for them?  How can any politician say they are acting responsibly and in the interests of the citizens when they hand over 1.5 million dollars of taxpayers money to a corporation that never expected to receive the grant in the first place?

Don't let anyone spin it to you in any other way, Mosaic had already decided to set up their corporate headquarters in a new downtown Regina office tower before the brain trust over at Regina City Council got generous and voted to give them an early christmas present. 

According to an article in the December 15, 2010 Regina Leader-Post, the city, school boards, and libraries will all feel the pinch so that Mosaic corporate executives can enjoy their nice new offices. 
"Mosaic is to save about $326,000 in taxes annually for five years. The city's annual share works out to nearly $128,000 a year and $134,000 for schools and about $64,000 to the library."
A check of Mosaic’s October 2010 investor fact sheet from their website will reveal that the company is doing quite nicely already.  In fact, their net assets are stated to be $13.1 billion.

The President and CEO of Mosaic is James T. Prokopanko. According to Forbes, his base salary for 2010 was $933,333.00 plus stock options of $2.4 million plus other compensation for a total of $6,255,588.00. Not bad, eh?

So there you have it, this company can afford to pay their CEO more than $6 million a year, but Fiacco, Fougere, and the rest of them, think they need a tax-payer funded subsidy and a 5 year free-ride.  Has your street been plowed yet?

p.s.  Mosaic was formed in 2004 by IMC Global and Cargill. Cargill holds 64% of Mosaic shares.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Typical, Big Business gets bigger and pays less, while the small guy foots the bill AGAIN.