The Lampasas Economic Dunces Club “Incentive Guidelines and Principles” [page 7] is a gift that keeps giving. A never-ending list of bad ideas and tax money giveaways. I already covered the “affordable housing” nonsense…now we get to the land giveaways:
Please turn your attention again to page 10 Section 4 – Types of Benefits and scroll down to 4.01 Land Grants:
“The LEDC currently owns more than 165 acres of real property for development by primary employers. The first preference for the LEDC is to sell property AT OR BELOW MARKET VALUE to qualified applicants.”
Wait….what? Here I thought the LEDC has been ‘developing’ this land for the last 7 years and $1.5 million dollars. This says they want to let the ‘primary employers’ develop it! Which is it? Why is Pope Eckermann hoovering up $100,000 to ‘develop’ the park as we speak if you want the ‘primary employer’ to develop it?
But even more confusing is this: if your first preference is to just SELL the property (at BELOW market value, no less) then why were you previously projecting ‘business’ park revenue of $250,000 per year?
Remember this from September 2014? =====>
“The LEDC’s new debt service payment will be about $150,000 a year, Mrs. Masonheimer said. The economic development corporation projects annual revenue of about $250,000, which will leave approximately $100,000 for operating costs after making loan payments.”
I just assumed that $250,000 per year in revenue was to come from renting or leasing the land you already wasted $2.5 million dollars on buying and ‘developing‘. NOW you say your first preference is to SELL the land? AT BELOW MARKET price?? LOL. How do you make revenue on an asset you already sold on the cheap? I’d love to know.
Maybe they think they’ll face rape the new employer on electricity prices to make up for all their other screw-ups (like the City currently does to its residents)? That will never happen. A private business is so much smarter than the LEDC, and the LEDC will be SO desperate to get SOMEONE in there to prove the project was a good idea that they will CAVE to the inevitable demands by the employer for a cut-rate electricity deal. I guarantee it.
We’ll dig deeper into the “Incentive Guidelines” in upcoming posts.