Tag: PEDC

                       LionsHead Specialty Tire and Wheel’s new 120,000 SF facility in the NW Industrial Park

the economic landscape

Its time for the Paris Chamber to express a well-meant “Good Job” to the Paris Economic Development Corporation (PEDC).  Despite challenges that comes with ignoring certain economic facts, thereby, to increase a perception and promotion by an oversell of smart planning, hard work, job growth, and the total dollar investments in Paris, the PEDC actually has seen extraordinary success over the past two or three years.

Almost as extraordinary as the lack of transparency.

The March 2023, Universal Fabricating announcement came with an anticipated 100 new quality jobs.

In April 2023, Houston-based Ametsa Packaging, LLC, announced a sugar liquefication and packaging plant and 100 new quality jobs at the former Sara Lee and J. Skinner facility.

Huhtamaki announced its expansion plans in August 2023 for 80 new jobs, increasing their already impressive workforce of 200. This project promises approximately $75 million in new investment for a reported 400,000 square feet of facility expansions and road and rail enhancements. (Huhtamaki’s announcement demonstrates why supporting the existing employer base is important for a community’s economic health.)

The PEDC claimed that over the next 10 years, these projects would infuse an estimated total economic impact of $1 billion into the local economy. And that the “ripple effect” of these investments will stimulate further economic activity.

“Enhancing our economic landscape”, the PEDC celebrated projects such as the Texas Department of Transportation on their new district headquarters in the PEDC-owned Gene Stallings Business Park, Delco’s grand opening of a state-of-the-art 550,000 SF facility on HWY 82 West, as well as the above LionsHead Specialty Tire and Wheel’s locating (the best-looking industrial building in Paris, [our opinion], closely followed by the Texas Highway Department’s new building, which as a government project is not subject to financial limits.)

All this, of course, is worthy of praise for a job well-done, even if other towns in the Dallas metroplex are seeing much greater job and residential growth. It doesn’t need, however, the exaggeration, nor the fuzzy obfuscation, which ignores obvious facts.

The objective facts:

Since 1993, when voters approved tax-funding the PEDC, General Plastic, Turner Industries, Oliver Rubber, Westinghouse, General Electric, and others are no longer here; those jobs are gone; payrolls missing in action. But all those jobs, and others from the numerous recent business closings, must be deducted from the number of new jobs being reported in order to have a half-way decent understanding of where we are in NET job creation.

Past payrolls are NOT objectively compared to current ones. Payrolls, investments, property taxes and sales tax receipts are subject to inflationary figures, which, in examination, are subjective.

Objectivity demands that if you are taking credit for every new gain, you must take credit for every loss.

But the PEDC is claiming credit for a billion dollar economic impact over the next ten years – not counting job loss, property tax abatement, misplaced priorities, plus an average $3 million PEDC budget cost (and $93 million for the 31-years its been in operation).

Evidently, the PEDC is the only entity in the economic landscape that doesn’t have to consider expenses.

Doing Better

Regardless, the PEDC has justified its existence, even if Paris might have been better served by spending the money on creating local residential improvements.

Or picking up the trash and cutting weeds in all of the economic landscape.

Maybe then, we wouldn’t have to give profitable firms money to come to Paris; they’d come because they wanted to…

Businesses need employees in a town that the management wants to live in.

 

                                                      return to      PARIS TEXAS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

                  Links:

          Goosey Gander 

          29-Years of Cronyism

          Six Uncomfortable Truths, plus one:

For over a decade, the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce recommended a vision vs  a brand.

We’ve known, and repeatedly put in writing, that “Paris needs a vision, a theme, and the protocols to make it a highly desired destination for a large, identified segment of the market.”

What the city, the local edc, the visitor’s and convention group, and what used to be the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce came up with is a brand that gives a new meaning to “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Thankfully, the Paris Texas Chamber was not invited to the party where the decision to blow $85,000 of the taxpayer’s money on a “brand” bragging about how Texans in Paris reach high.

Based on arrest records, its likely smoking a peculiar weed or guzzling bottled moonshine or bonded and branded alcohol.

We would have asked if they really wanted to make Paris a desired destination for that large, identified segment of the market?

Currently, there’s already too much competition within it – as well as over consumption. In every B-movie, a crook with a gun tells those being robbed, “Reach higher.”

Now, the co-conspirators are wasting more dollars pasting this brand on all kinds of stationery, vehicles, signs, ads, etc., all paid for by mingling – on an equal basis – public and private funds or lying about it.

Sure, without a doubt, this “brand” has some sort of wobbly vision, and a theme that encourages some people to do strange things, like getting arrested for peeing in public.

Of course, it might be a little less objectionable if it didn’t make so many who participate think they can sing.

It’s not, however, the kind of vision or theme we had in mind – as standing out doesn’t always mean standing up.

When you’re lying in the gutter “reach higher” also means to try and climb the curb.

Paris may soon be known as the wrath of grapes or where the dawn comes up like thunder.

If we live up to the brand, Paris will be a place where you can start out fit as a fiddle and end up tight as a drum.

When the Paris Texas Chamber talks about a vision for Paris, it’s a way to build the kind of town where you and others (we) want to live.

The theme is a designed and designated focus on an established central objective. The vision and theme must have the imperative protocols that structure the necessary goals (steps) on how the objective will be achieved.  It must be defined and realistic, with worthwhile means to pay for achieving that objective.

Our community and economic development organization are good at promoting events that publicize and promotes the event (but not Paris: Paris is just a place where the Sphecidae or Crabronidae are having a meeting). But the vision is limited.

A mish-mash of events will not likely build the kind of community you want to live in – a town where others would want to live.

 

return to:    Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

Link:

      Public-Private Partnerships

     Investing in People‘

     The Objective

 

The objective of the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce is simply to be a voice for those of us in the community who, otherwise, would have no voice.

  

Where else will you see, read or hear anything that dissents from or even question what citizens are told relating to a City of Paris issue, or an endeavor of the tax-supported Paris Economic Development Corporation (PEDC)?    

When all other reporting entities are selling the same thing – and doing it with the same look, the same smell, and echoing what they’ve been told from the same source – isn’t there something wrong?

How many other local news entities are explaining that what’s being sold is something that will always cost taxpayers money, now or in the near future?

There’s no transparency on the what, who, why, and all the costs, but shouldn’t one entity, at least, be asking serious questions about those things?

Over the last five or six years, other than the Paris Chamber, which news outlet in Paris dissents or offers a counterpoint on what the local leadership is planning to do, is doing or has done, the way it is or is not being done, or will be done, and reports the total costs?

Yep.

None.

Not one.

They ignore the fact that each of us know there’s never complete 100% agreement on anything!  There’s always someone who is like a pig with laryngitis; disgruntied.

(Yes; pitiful. A bad pun.)

 

Anyway, when it comes to what The Three Mustyrears advocate; then, its kumbaya –    They pat themselves and the local Happy Talk media on the back, signaling a naive idealism and a sort of a touchy-feely, hand-holding spirit of a make-believe rosy-eyed unity.

However, as years roll by we never see, read or hear about the failures.

We never see, read or hear of all the incentives given or promises made to firms that locate in Paris, or how the decisions are made on which firms will be given or denied incentives. Especially, cash.

What are the guidelines on giving cash, if any? How is it justified? 

Besides stupidity?

NEVER have taxpayers seen or read or heard the results of a full forensic examination of the total cost of the incentives given: Every dollar for every incentive is a direct costs to Paris taxpayers.  Even the incentives are not reported: It’s always “and other incentives.”

NEVER do we ever see, read or hear the total cost of incentives provided to those industries and businesses that fail, but taxpayers need to know how many dollars we’re waving bye-bye to . . .

no objectivity, no accountability.

And until now, there’s been no public objections over the city council’s insanity(?) of giving themselves the right and the power to make life-time appointments to the PEDC’s Board of Directors.

But that’s another story for another time and another place about local cronyism  ––

But is a supreme court of a few local cronies in charge of the public’s money for their remaining lifetime a good idea?

The main point of all this is that the only local effort for actual transparency comes from the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce, and we’re only trying to inform everyone about the benefits of eating grapes – as our sole objective is raisin awareness.

(Yes. It’s a mental aberration, but never trust anyone without a sense of humor. Even a sick one.)

Paris has so many assets its hard to list them all. But our community and economic improvement and development organizations ignore them or play whack-a-mole when one wanting to go to work pops up. Assets all over Paris have bumps on their head.

The assets are unused deeds, while we grow weeds.

So, inside the Loop, much of Paris is dying. The things we should be doing, we ignore.

But we are determined to get all our eggs in the industrial basket – no matter what it cost us! We may not really know what we’re doing, but, come hell or high water, we’re going to keep doing it until the termites are the last survivors in a socialists paradise.

 

And that’s not funny … not even in a sad sort of way.

 

return to   Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

Links:

    Off-Track On “Economic Engines”

      The Paris Texas “Comprehensive Plan’

    Reinforcing Failure