You’ll recall, the recent Dispatch article about “The Cost of Growth” in Lampasas fails to mention any of the actual costs at all. This series presents the ACTUAL costs to our “growth”. We already covered the millions in tax dollars the LEDC has skimmed over the last 20 years. We also covered the high cost of our “Director of Economic Development” Nerf position currently held by Mandy Walsh.
We also explained why a 21% increase in sales tax receipts might not be the great news the LEDC seems to think it is. Let’s continue into the article further:
According to the Dispatch article: “In addition, residential development has substantially increased in the past three years with five new residential subdivisions underway, along with numerous infill residential developments throughout the city.”
Again, the article fails to mention any COSTS from these developments – and they are fairly large.
Two of those five developments are Stone Valley and Brodie Estates. In both cases, City council voted to hand out tax dollars (or forfeit fees to City coffers) to subsidize these developments.
Stone Valley saw six-figure help in the form of reimbursements and for waiving electrical hookup fees to each of the 67 houses. The waived electrical hookup fees ALONE cost the City $72,000. TJ Monroe and Chuck Williamson even voted in favor of WAIVING all of the building permit fees for developer Deorald Finney! This is the same City that just AGAIN raised electrical rates on the entire town, after promising in February 2021 that the electric fund was healthy.
Brodie Estates developer S2M2 hired FORMER council member Chris Harrison to lobby for money for a drainage pond in THEIR development. Mayor Misti Talbert and council ended up handing them $185,000 from the taxpayers.
Those two developments ALONE were the recipients of roughly THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS in subsidies. Yet Finley, Mandy and the LEDC proudly point to “all the new subdivisions” as evidence they are doing a fine job at “growing” the economy. Once again, these dolts are pumping water from the deep end to the shallow end of the pool.
But there are MORE costs to these developments!
Turns out, there are now water pressure problems in the “upper pressure plane” – which is a fancy way of saying “near the spot that they just dumped five dozen new houses”. The cost just to study the problem and find a solution will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. If more pumps and bigger lines are needed (almost a certainty), expect a lot more money going out the door.
Maybe instead of GIVING these developers hundreds of thousands of dollars to build more houses, they should CHARGE these developers a decent-sized “impact fee” (perhaps $2,500 per house – or 1% of Deorald’s selling price?) for all of these costs that will now be piling up for the rest of us.
Just a thought.
Part IV coming soon…..