Author: parischamber

Residential Renewal or Stupidity?

14-Years ago, in 2008, Paris (Texas) City Council members were talking residential renewal or stupidity; talking about creating a “residential tax abatement” for new housing and/or new residential improvements, but had never said where. What the council was talking about doing meant that Enterprise Zones (later later called Redevelopment or “Opportunity” Zones) would require approval before an abatement could legally be given.

Even back then, the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce knew that a Paris Imperative existed to forget about the intent of a law and, instead, figure out how it can be used to not do the right thing. Despite that knowledge, we urged the City of Paris to start an urban homestead program in the Enterprise Zone, which state law allowed.  Instead of giving tax relief to areas that don’t qualify and encouraging abandonment of some intercity areas and neighborhoods, we suggested that Paris do the right thing: Use the existing Enterprise Zone as a test program – to see if it does or doesn’t work.

If the test program works, then consider creating zones all over Paris – or ask the Paris Chamber how to do community development.

We also said that following the history on how things are normally done, is it likely – until the Paris Matrix can figure out how far out north or east this can be done – a decision on where will never be made.  And none were, except to forget the effort . . .

WHY, we wondered, back in 2008, will Paris not create opportunities for individuals to use their sweat equity in exchange for the opportunity to own their own homes under an urban renewal program? Not all older couples are that interested in cooling, heating, cleaning, and maintaining 3,000 to 5,000 square feet of floor space. Not when they can fix up and add a few special touches to create an modern, smaller luxury home for less money than it would take to build a new one. And many young couples, starting a life together, have the energy and know-how to improve a starter home and use what they would pay as rent to do it, given an opportunity to acquire one.

Even in 2008, we knew the residential imperative should be to get homes improved and back on the tax rolls; not subsidizing developers to build for-profit homes and income rental properties.

Some citizens (and council members) argued that an urban renewal program wouldn’t work in Paris. How they knew this, as one had (and has) never been tried in Paris, is beyond our understanding (then and now)…

Of course, it could be they didn’t want it tried in the Enterprise Zone, in the “west side”. For instance, some wanted it tried in areas that didn’t quality for tax abatement. But they were successful in getting the distressed area designation spread to over most of the town.

Today, over half of the land area inside the Paris city limits is in a designated “distressed area” – and the leadership calls it progress.

Since 1996, over the last 26 or 27-odd years (in Paris, they’re all odd), millions of tax dollars have been spent on consultant fees and for big salaries to solve our problems. Most of it has been – and is – wasted on people who talk a good game and report well, but can’t produce; and Paris has continued to deteriorate.

Now, all Paris is doing is giving property tax abatement to developers who know how to sell sugar to those who love sweet talk, but don’t know crap about actual community development.

So far, we see very little indication that the right thing is being or will be done in the right way.

But the Paris Chamber doesn’t have a thing to do with the way things are done . . . or how Paris looks.

Regretfully.

Or Thankfully.

 

 2nd Posting (2009): Investing in People 

The City of Paris owns or could/should own a lot of houses on which taxes have not been paid for years.  And there are numerous vacant, substandard houses on which huge tax bills are owed that the city will likely end up owning, also. 

Why not fix the problem by investing in people?

So now, the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce is going to try it once more:  A city that owns housing in an Enterprise Zone can establish an urban homestead program, through which the city sells a house it owns to a private citizen for an amount not to exceed $100.

The individual buying the property must agree to live in the house for at least seven years and to renovate or remodel the residence to meet the level of maintenance stated in a written agreement between the individual and the city.  After the individual lives in the house for the seven years and satisfies the agreed upon improvements, the city deeds the house to the individual (or assigns it to a bank that may be financing the improvements for the individual).

True, not all the folks hopping on an urban homestead program will follow thru…and the city or program administrator will have to reclaim the property.  But many will follow thru, improving their lives (and the City of Paris). 

Any homes that are returned can be offered to others who will complete the terms of the homestead agreement. There will never be enough homes . . .

Last year,in 2008, the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce has tried to point city officials to the fact that there are many individuals with the energy and strength of character who could and would use their sweat equity for an opportunity to own their own home under such a program. 

Yes, we understand that many local movers and shakers, who have no more idea of community and economic development than Oak Wilt fungus, see the Paris Chamber as an irritant to their schemes or beliefs; but they should know that business is business and a good idea is a good idea – no matter where it comes from. 

Paris talks about improving Paris.  Paris talks about the need to improve and beautify. Paris talks about substandard homes with unpaid taxes, and talks about what to do with them. But not utilizing available programs to improve a large part of Paris because it is on the west or – as many of the more ignorant state it – the wrong side of town is inexcusable! 

Sure, we understand why some want to deny incentives for businesses and new home construction in the Enterprise Zone, even if such action violates warranties that had to be made in the Contract to get the Zone approved. We find such actions wrong, ethically repulsive, and don’t agree with it, but, considering the parties involved, we understand it. 

But to deny younger couples or retirees and others who have the energy and/or resources to own their homes – while eliminating eyesores – and improving Paris – is mind-boggling!  And that we don’t understand.

Why wouldn’t we invest in our people? 

Talk about creating opportunities – 

The Paris Chamber’s recommendations are on record, and the City has a considerable payroll for key employees to keep up with such programs, so they cannot plead ignorance. 

The money the city has wasted (and is wasting) on know-little consultants would have more than paid for the Paris Chamber’s recommendations for improving residential areas all over Paris, through which clean-up, fix-up, paint-up materials would be exchanged for “sweat equity” labor and. . .  Oh, well.

How much longer can Paris afford to wait? 

                                                                                                     return to  The Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

The Grand  &  the Visitor’s Tax:

Closing out 2022, the City of Paris has not completed the restoration promised for the Grand Theater over a decade ago; click the links below for verification; to see what the Paris Texas Chamber was warning about years ago . City council members, past and present, have wasted and are wasting a half-million dollars of the taxpayer’s money, creating a decade-plus long money-pit.

In the meantime,  since 2008, city leaders who have made the worst possible decisions for Paris, have downplayed and cussed the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce for confronting  wrong decisions and actions, which have been and are detrimental to the equal economic progress of local families who want to improve their lives economically.

While the city demands perfection of others in meeting their demands, it ignores its own obligations and responsibilities. Simply because it cannot meet or carry-out its own actions and promises, it should not force others to waste decades of time and money in their efforts to restore their downtown properties: Think of the First National Bank and the Rodgers-Wade buildings.

Our local organizations, who claim to do community and economic development, refuse to consider any approach that would require a transparent examination of fairness – or their own bias. And really dislike others doing so . . .

To even try and excuse the result of this Grand Theater project should require one to examine their own bias and knowledge – and sanity.

 

If interested, here are a few links (and the years they were posted on our website):

aint_it_grand (from 2010)

 

at_the_grand (from 2012)

 

grand_things__paris_texas (from 2013)

For over three years, The Paris News (and it’s parent company) repeatedly asked subscribers to urge their elected U. S. officials to vote “yes” to subsidize newspapers.

You’ve read that correctly.

Two (2) bills that later died in Congress called for government funding of newspapers:  The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, was buried in the 2,135-page tax-and-spending bill (in Section 138516).  It gave a refundable tax credit based on a newspaper’s total wages; thereby, subsidizing the ownership’s profit.

The credit could have been used for tax reduction of $25,000 for up to 1,500 employees the first year; decreasing to $15,000 per employee after the first year. All in all, allowing $1.67 billion in tax credit over ten years.

The Paris News claimed it would help small local newspapers survive.

Gannett, one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains (employing over 4,000 journalists at USA Today, and such local papers as The Arizona Republic and Detroit Free Press), would gain as much as $127.5 million over five years, called the effort “a good shot in the arm.”

The chain never specified how the money would be used, but it’s very likely that this “small” newspaper would find a way, as would other major news outlets.

In 2016, Forbes Magazine reported that 15 Billionaires owned most of the nation’s news media companies.

When a leftist haven, such as Harvard, warns that American media is no longer a traditional national information highway, self-regulated to prevent government intervention over the news and to ensure a free press, we can no longer claim ignorance of what has and is going on: We have to include stupidity.

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1930’s that whatever government subsidizes it can control (by regulation). Today, our government is subsidizing – controlling – everything.

The real enclaves of socialist thought are in our schools, colleges, legislative halls, courts, and the national news media.

They’ve done a wonderful job of selling citizens on the glories of human misery and enslavement. Around 42% of us are willing to try it (or are too ignorant to know or too stupid to understand what’s going on); and the socialism – a push for party dictatorship or whatever it is – has divided our nation.

We have been seduced, piously begged to meet in the middle, to compromise on issues – to completely forget principles – and “come together for the common good.”

By setting aside principles of proven value, in order to accept issues of dubious value, what have we accepted? When good is mixed with evil, what remains – after all the good is gone? 

We’ve met in the middle too many years too many times on too many issues; otherwise, how could we be over $30 Trillion in debt?

As with the “national” media, the Paris News folks have, like parrots, mindlessly regurgitated every socialist issue they’ve been sent by the Associated Press, USA Today, Reuters, and the left-wing Texas Tribune; then, they’ve shown their own confusion on the “Voices” editorial page. They’ve – it – has echoed the babbling calls of the emotionally disturbed and mentally deranged – about “extremists, domestic terrorists, white racists, Uncle Toms, and other deplorables” – in general, those who believe in Constitutional government – while complaining about a loss of readership.

In recent national elections, Paris and Lamar County voted for candidates who promised to vote for limiting government’s reach by an almost 2 to 1 margin.

Yet, the Paris News, like the nation’s media, wants to blame those who value a respect for the principles of the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights – the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution – as the reason for its demise.

And feels entitled to demand those whom it belittles and insults to give it money?

It seems they are unable to make a logical connection, but want to change the nation’s Constitution. They never, however, have a replacement for it.

Does the Paris News know that government “Diversity Officers” – controllers of the spoken and written word – are now placed in federal agencies and in the military?

Does the Paris News know that “Diversity Offices” are already in corporations not part of the Big Business-Big Government socialists cronyism, to make sure they do not run afoul of speech and thought requirements of the federal government?

Sound familiar? It should. Russian KGB Officers with the same responsibilities were in every USSR military, government, industrial and business entity.

Today’s wake-up call is the media’s socialist bias: It’s very close to being our homegrown equivalent of Pravda or China’s Xinhua News Agency.

Yet, while claiming to serve the community, it repeatedly condemns a majority of the community voters.

The Paris Texas Chamber received an email from a Razorback fan, in which he was giving kudos to the Gold Hogvillain of Rodgers, Arkansas for the following, which should be a required preface on every piece of local, state, or national “pending” legislation:

No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: “No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into.”

  Until that happens, there is no “after socialism.“