Category: Uncategorized

Questions:

Where is the “core area” of the City of Paris?

When is illegal legal? And,

What is the total cost to the taxpayers for all the current incentives given to a few favored endeavors? (There’s always a cost, as nothing is free.)

The city says it “is incentivizing reinvestment in the core area of the city…”

But . . . where is “the core…”?

Surely, it’s not the Towne Center Shopping Center where the city is “giving” questionable incentives –incentivizing possibly even illegal retail sales tax rebates – to four retail businesses (that replace four businesses that closed); plus, tax abatement to the shopping center owner.

But what “low income” or “disadvantaged area” of Paris qualifies those four firms or the owner of the shopping center for incentives? (click for what qualifies)?

When did Texas’ Retail Sales Tax become a Special District tax? Isn’t the retail sales tax a public tax, which can only be used for public purposes? (When a tax law is only a mask to exact funds from the public when its true intent is to give undue benefit and advantage to a private enterprise, it will not satisfy the requirement of public purpose. Click to read more from Yale Law Journal.)

The city is subsidizing – incentivitizing – a few home builders and apartment developers; the city says, “At least four”.

WHY?

We’re “incentivizing” industry – even giving cash!

WHY?

We’re building a $7-million street for a private developer.

WHY

Taxpayers are subsidizing a motel on North Main Street.

WHY?

Government gets a bit too big for its britches when citizens elect too many to offices who allow administrative employees to tell them what to do – instead of overseeing the actions and the decisions of key employees who usually are seeking to build a portfolio to a better job.

A bureaucrat, a manager or an administrator in an organizations that has lost its way, are only role players. To keep their job, they must be a collaborative contributor to the overall concept of the organization. They are required to not only assume the values of the organization, but its personality as well.

Too often, those we elect end up listening to and carrying out recommendations of staff bureaucrats.

No act performed by a citizen, while in the city limits of Paris, Texas, shall be without a charge from the city. The rule is, “Everything costs.” There are no exceptions  –  unless it’s an incentive or an abatement given to one of the chosen few.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to know the total cost to taxpayers of all the incentives that our hired guns – looking for success stories – recommended, and were blindly approved by those we have elected?

 

A city plan – like most government plans – seems to take a good idea and make it an implausible concept or something impossible to implement.

It’s the nature of government.

The job of a city council, an economic or community development organization, most chambers of commerce, local school boards, county commissioners, a “community” newspaper, and, sadly, even churches or libraries, seems to be to take a great idea and make it almost good. Principles are forgotten; every decision becomes a compromise.

Most of the managers and directors of these organizations are affable, but can be sneaky or even mean little boogers. Operating on Other People’s Money, most are simply bureaucratic snowflakes: They like government. They think government is good, instead of it being a necessary evil that increases your tax bill every year.

They are Government in the same way Dr. Ego Fauci is Science.

The majority of them, like Fauci, hold their jobs by being good at puckering up and selling someday.

We say this, knowing that, once upon a time, one of our directors was one of them, but luckily, for us, he’s full of tender mercy.

He said he had a friend, in his younger days, who, at the age of 15, discovered girls. Sadly, he also says, this caused his friend to discover most of the Kentucky distillers at age 20. Then, he sadly adds, his friend discovered, at 58, there’s no such thing as someday.

As ol’ Ernest Tubb yodeled in 1945, “Tomorrow Never Comes” . . . .

That, of course, is history, which today’s “woke” snowflakes are busy trying to eliminate – something they have no control over – to demonstrate they are nice and wonderful people.

They have an excuse; just not a reason.

Other than censorship.

IF allowed, who censors the censors?

History provides the measure of how far we’ve come over time – it’s how intelligent people measure progress.

Censorship is regressive; bringing back the Inquisition, the burning of books, ruling classes, economic enslavement, denying educational opportunities, etc.

But if YOU don’t let them have their way, you’re a racist – AND a domestic terrorist.

Suddenly, it seems, common sense is being thrown out with history. But that’s another story for another time, another place. 

In July, in 1911, temperatures climbed into the high 90s along the Eastern Seaboard. It stayed there for days, killing 211 people in New York alone. News reports claim that the killer heat wave drove some people insane (with New York values it isn’t a long drive . . .)

It was in that year of 1911, that the first workable air conditioner was patented by Willis Carrier (The Rational Psychrometric Formulae). By the late 1930’s, air conditioning was being installed in approximately 2% of American homes.

Paris demands historically-accurate restoration of homes and businesses in the historical district, yet, allows air conditioning in homes constructed over 120-years ago.

That’s funny, if you can’t ignore historical accuracy.

Or wasn’t forced to pay for it.

 

return to The Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

During – and before – the 1950s, Paris Texas was a good-looking community. In the 60’s, it was a community of economic promise. Going into the 70s, Paris was a growing community. Then, in 1982, as the politicians swapped the private enterprise system for State Capitalism – a partnership between Big Business and Big Government – a tornado hit, and changed the community’s condition.

The amount of destruction of homes and established businesses in older areas became an opportunity for members of the leadership to rebuild Paris, or enrich themselves.

But, the local leadership personally jumped on the new opportunities offered by state and federal grants and low-cost loans to invest heavily in vacant North and East areas along the relatively new NE Loop 286.

Today, inside the Loop, approximately three-fours of Paris is a “social and economic liability…a menace to health, safety, morals and welfare.” It’s an official “distressed area”.

That’s what the City of Paris claims, not the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce.

It’s the result of decisions by those organizations in charge of community and economic development. And a local real estate group that, almost without fail, played a major role in the conspiracy for which the bill is now being presented.

(If you are in the real estate industry, tuffy-wuffy: It’s your bitter pill-of-fact. You – or too many of your fellow agents – swallowed perceptions and myths that are responsible for most of the stagnation in Paris. As a group, you supported – allowing – community organizations that are responsible for decades of no growth.

As professionals, you should have known better! We are not saying that all of you are clunks, but there is more than just a touch of troglodytic clabber in the mental makeup of those who allowed the perceptions and myths fostered by those in charge.

YOU gave them your money and your support. You didn’t say, “Wait a minute – How can I sell Paris as a desirable place to live or do business, if half the town is undesirable?

Over time, words get lost; even words like “on the west (or south) side…”

Excuses became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For years, residential and retail developers were urged to invest in the vacant North and East areas. They were quietly warned in hemi-demi-semi-thunderous under-tones, with a racist sort of squeak that would kill knee-high cotton, that “nothing will go on the west and south areas of Paris” and “oh, you don’t want to live in those areas!” On behalf of investors and depositors, local banks led the way with lending policies on appraisals by approved appraisers who toed the line.

The leadership forgot that people don’t want cancer, and chickens do come home to roost.

Today’s problems were over 40-years in the making. Giving the downtown area another aspirin or a corporation cash will not cure them.

What Paris has done to itself is almost unimaginable.

And what we’re doing today is unimaginable.

We know not what path others may take, but as for the Paris Texas Chamber, we will never lie to ourselves about the community’s condition.