Great job by GoLocalProv’s Russell Moore, who has been following developments from the beginning, bringing this downright scary situation to light.

That the City of Providence, in its greed for ever more tax revenue, drove this business to close with a near quintupling of its property taxes is already really bad. Hellooooo, Providence officials: you cannot endlessly jack property taxes and expect it won’t have negatively impact your tax base.

Nearly one year after being hit with a $1 million tax hike by the City of Providence, Teppco, a propane terminal located at ProvPort, has officially closed its doors. The company will cease doing business in Providence this week — a move that will cause its 36 employees to look for new jobs.

Worse, however, refusal by city officials to answer questions about this insane tax hike caused a potential buyer of the business to walk away – taking with them the prospect of saving those thirty six jobs.

Moreover, the failure by city officials to respond and work to resolve the issues caused Teppco to lose a potential buyer that would have allowed the facility to continue to operate and retain jobs.

From the beginning, Providence officials had refused to answer the business’ questions about the basis for this insane property tax hike. Incredibly, at one point, the affected business actually resorted to filing an APRA request of Providence to try to get answers. But with answers still not forthcoming, the buyer walked.

What did Mayor Elorza know about this? How is it remotely responsible for Providence officials to simply bury their heads in the sand and refuse to engage after inflicting what turns out to be a fatal tax increase on a business?