Tag: Paris

The Great Art of selling baloney

BY Law, it’s the local Stooges – uh – property tax payers of Paris – who are responsible for all debts of the PEDC. They are the ones who are subsidizing industry in Lamar County, in addition to Paris. Families who can barely afford to feed their kids and pay the cost of city utilities are subsidizing some of the most profitable industries.

Consider that the Paris Economic Development Corporation (the PEDC) gave $350,000 to Blossom Aerospace, a firm in Blossom, Texas, which was recently purchase by an Oklahoma firm.

The PEDC’s President was reported that the gift “aligns with the PEDC’s priorities of business retention and expansion.”

The PEDC’s Executive Director was also quoted, saying that it “was a win for our community that will generate over $70 million in new payroll over the next seven years.”

The money being given away comes from the Paris retail sales tax, of course, not Blossom’s.

And the ability to tell the future – to the dollar – should earn one a multi-billion annual salary or, at least, an appointment as Secretary of the U. S. Department of the Treasury.

Even demented Joe could understand that kind of clarity.

It’s Great Art or a Sharpie drawing.

Every time you clean something, you just make something else dirty.

Regardless, its enough to make you wanta’ slap your Grandma . . .

Yes, we’re told that the local economy does not stop at the Paris city limits, as many of the employees, working in Paris, live in Lamar County and spend money in Paris.

So do some happy folks in Oklahoma, and in Red River, Delta and Fannin Counties.

Using that logic, will Paris subsidize industries in those areas, too?

Are Petty, Direct, Detroit, Roxton, Reno, and all the other Lamar County communities eligible?

For years, we’ve been told a lot of things. Most of it being Happy Talk and Half Truths; all tied together with a logic that defies understanding.

How much of this twisting in the wind help those who cannot afford to pay for salaries, retirement, office expenses, street repairs and water and sewer and property taxes inside the city limits?

Sadly, proponents of corporate welfare suffer from a false belief that they can best determine what technology has the best chance of success, which jobs and products best supply our needs, where best to expend scarce supplies of capital, and that the rest of us will believe just about everything.

For a lot of people, this kind of stuff ruins doing much for Paris.

And the excuse of “They’re creating jobs” ignores the fact that companies need someone in those jobs – people working to create or produce a product that can be sold for a profit. Without bodies, without someone in those jobs, there is no profit.

But the PEDC is swapping cash and other incentives for promises.

Some economically desperate towns will give anything that’s not nailed down to a new industry.

Not only will Paris do it, we’ll throw in some cash as well.

 

One of the reasons why the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce distrusts so many government bureaucrats (not workers, bureaucrats):

After years of community and economic wrong-doing by several large and small Texas’ cities, legislators gave them a sly wink that a ‘safe haven” now exist in the Chapter 380 law for any of their past, on-going or currently contemplated sins. Under the new Chapter 380 Program, anything legal or semi-legal can be economic development.

It is such a bad law that state legislators declined to determine specifically which incentives, when offered singularly or in combination, constitute a “program … to promote state or local economic development.” 

There are no rules governing community and economic development anymore, except for civil injury or death.

Economic development is now anything a city council says that it is – Whether an incentive is requested or not, it gives a city control over all development efforts.

Government takes care of government; government grows government.

Taxpayers have raised such a ruckus over wasted tax-dollars that lawmakers had to do something to bail-out their brethren.

Therefore, 380 agreements serve to only memorialize economic development projects that cities create. It gives a city council the rights of management and control over anything that it designates as a 380 project, thereby setting aside the Constitutional rights of private property ownership.

If government can control it, it – or their friends or supporters or the bureaucrat administrators – can reap the rewards while you pay the taxes, which government also puts into its pockets.

IF someone can control and manage your property, in ways that they determine, what good is your ownership of it?

Logic is not a government strong point.

The Chapter 380 law requires that a “claw-back” or “recapture” provision be in every 380-agreement. It’s a way for cities to claim that taxpayers can get the total cost of incentives and grant or loan money back – IF their economic development partner does not meet or deliver on the agreed performance.

Cities and economic development corporations now have an excuse: A guarantee that no incentive will be wasted – as every and all are recoverable.

Whoopee!

The cockroach in the coffee is that cities have always been free to have “claw back” provisions from failed goals set forth under agreement terms. Its why we’ve had agreements and contracts since 1215 (the Magna Carta signing). But moving on:

The problem for taxpayers – who pay for all incentives – is that under Section 380.001(b), the governing body may: (1) administer a 380 program by the use of municipal personnel; (2) contract with the federal government, the state, a political subdivision of the state, a nonprofit organization, or any other entity for the administration of a program.

That is a cronyism loophole large enough for the 138,600,000 supporters of the current administration to do the Boot Scootin’ Boogie in . . . (That’s the 42% that polls are reporting of the nation’s 330-million population, if you’re wondering.) Recently, over a cup of coffee, one of our Paris Chamber’s supporters said he was “missing the cheap gas prices and mean tweets.”

Chapter 380 is to protect government, while taking care of government’s friends and insiders.

It certainly is not about achieving results, as not all projects are “economic development programs.”

An improvement or a restoration of a building, allowing new instant slums in a neighborhood, some guy cleaning up junk in his yard, some crew selling “pot” on the streets, some gal painting her navel at the Culbertson Fountain, anything that can be claimed to have a potential for “community development” or to improve Paris’ appearance, can now become “economic” in the eyes of the city or when used by the PEDC (when they want it to be).

A 380 designation gives the city total administrative control and management of an entire project – which are the basic rights of private property ownership. And don’t be fooled: Control and management far exceeds the government right of ‘reasonable’ regulation.

Paris is now trying to treat community development as a need for a Chapter 380 economic development agreement; even if no loan or grant or incentive has been made by the city.

Forget any understanding of what, why, and how a project should be done.

 

On Tuesday, May 10, 2022, the City of Paris council members voted to demand rental properties in the historical districts to pay “registration” fees. On all rental properties? Even above ground-floor apartments and condos being recommended as a way to have more people living in the downtown area?   

The city grants – gives – taxpayer’s dollars to downtown owners who will improve the appearance of their buildings, but charges regulation, restrictions and fees for others to improve their property. Why?

Think about the thinking: Creating more regulations, restrictions, and fees on rental properties is the way to (a) create more affordable housing and to improve Paris; or (b) hope higher rents will keep the (wink) undesirable “low income” folks out of the neighborhood?

Will increasing rental fees win the war against blight, decay, and rot in the area’s older neighborhoods?

Let’s face it: Large areas of Paris are a disgrace; ugly to the eye and an insult to humanity. Especially, when the city allowed the property to decline to a point where it needs repairs.

We’re not against equally applied standards – or fines – to prevent litter, junk in front yards, weeds, maintenance neglect, etc., but restrictions, regulations and fees to tell owners what they must do?

“…com’on, man!”

Three short weeks before, the Paris Texas Chamber had suggested the city be prohibited, by ordinance or Charter change, from adopting or enforcing regulations that requires an owner of a vacant residential or commercial property to obtain a permit to do repairs to their property, (a) if it is necessary to protect public safety; or (b) to prevent further damage to the building.

So the city’’s guiding hands did the very opposite of what needs doing.

The city has planners and other sellers of services who find regulations, restrictions and fees successful ways to use the taxpayer’s money. Somehow, those ways seem to benefit them, seldom the community. Everyone knows the examples:

  • Incentives to builders for 5 little-bitty $200,000 affordable homes (1150 to 1250 sq. ft.); a million dollar guarantee

  • Approving really tiny (750 to 800 sq. ft.) homes in established older neighborhoods or in retail and commercially zoned areas

  • giving incentives to apartment complex purchasers or builders; and

  • Using an estimated $7-million to build a street for a residential development with a small retail or commercial area thrown into the mix.

None of those things, nada, are doing anything to improve the older existing, ignored for years, city discriminated against neighborhoods.

But $7 to $8 million, not counting the other incentives, used wisely, could – the catch here, of course, is being “used wisely”.

Millions of dollars to builders and a few wealthy corporations, but Paris will not purchase in bulk-at-a-discount building fix-up, paint-up, and clean-up materials to provide families willing to use sweat equity to repair or improve their home in an older neighborhood?

Why not?

As the Paris Chamber previously stated: There are only two reasons to penalize the improvement of property: Greed for fees or stupidity.

Paris does both, often at the same time, and calls it progress.

 

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