Travis County Commissioners Court

June 26, 2012 - Item 2
Agenda

View captioned video.

Number 2 is a public hearing to receive comments on a Draft Travis County Economic Development Incentives Policy.
Move the public hearing be open.

>> Second.

>> All in favor?
That passes by unanimous vote.
This is different than the backup?

>> Slightly.

>> Okay.

>> So to open up the public hearing, we have a brief power point presentation just to provide some background for the items. And I think we're cueing that up right now and you have copies as well that katy has passed out.
I wanted to go over a few of the key goals of the draft economic development policy that you have before you that you are going to be receiving comments on today.
The goals is encourage new investment in the community, stimulate new job growth and promote workforce development, enhance the tax base and just a note about the policy today, the approved policy -- or an approved policy is required for a tax abatement policy.
And then this draft policy actually allows you to do both, both rebates and tax abatement.
50% of the new positions should be filled with Travis County residents.
This is included in the base requirement for consideration for an incentive.
And then the firm needs to be able to provide an equal employment opportunity policy.
On slide number 4, the basic components of consideration for an incentive are listed here.
And it's based on the level of investment, the number of jobs created, whether or not the project will be leed certified, the location of the project and their program for hiring and training economically disadvantaged community members.
And just a note at the bottom of the page, the total incentive whether it's a rebate or an abatement is not to exceed 80% of the taxes on new eligible property value.
The next few slides just lay out the percentages and so slide number 5 is the base incentive laid out here.
25 to 100 million is -- could qualify an applicant for 25%.
More than 100 million and up to 200 at 33.5, and more than 200 million at 45%.
Then the draft policy is structured so after the base you can have additional percentages over the base.
And that would be the number of new jobs, of course at least 50 was in the base and we have laid out here on this slide the sliding scale basically as additional jobs are layered on top of the 50 job requirements.
Leed is on slide number 7.
There are basically four categories, basic silver, gold and platinum.
That's the green building fees.
And that scale for an additional incentive percentage goes up from 2% at basic, 3% at silver, 4 at gold and 5% at platinum.
Then on slide number 8, location, an additional 5% incentive can be granted if the company is located in -- and we've got three different areas here.
I think we've had some discussion about possibly adding some other definitions, but this is what we've got in there right now.
A regional activity center defined by campo, a city of Austin desired development zone, and any activity center that might be identified in a future Travis County comprehensive plan.
Then on to the economically disadvantaged piece, this is the last potential additional percentage that could be added and that could get you a 10% additional incentive if your firm is -- does one of three things.
First of all, if you offer a needs based scholarship program that covers 50% of the tuition costs for a degree or a certificate or you provide employment to participants of any scholarship or workforce training program that's approved by the county.
And we would anticipate working those programs through our health and human services director sherry fleming.
And then lastly there's an alternative to provide a specified monetary donation to workforce training program or workforce training fund, again, approved by the county and working through that same approval process.
We've included slide number 10 in here for you just kind of as a comparison of the draft policy to the previous policy.
I think we talked about this a fair amount at the work session in may.
But some of the major changes are we've reduced the minimum investment from 100 million to 25 million and reduced the minimum new job requirement from 500 jobs to 50 jobs with the thought that that would encourage some of the smaller companies to apply.
The draft, as I mentioned before, does include bet tax abatement and tax rebate agreements and the prior addressed rebates only.
There is now a more defined application process in the draft policy and we just covered the added incentives for green building, desired development location and workforce training for the economically disadvantaged individuals.
And then we've also included the provision for a recapture firm in the policy that would address sufficient performance.
And then wrapping up, these next two slides are just some of the previously suggested discussion areas that we've had with the court that we had requested some direction on and that the court will be receiving comments on today as well.
The first one is whether to require a super majority of the Commissioners court to approve any waiver and that would include if the court wanted to consider an incentive on leased facilities.
To the policy.
Whether or not to charge a fee for each new request or incentive and we've included in the policy currently $1,000 and that would basically -- it's my understanding cover the cost of having capcog do that fiscal analysis for us.
Whether or not to require an applicant to achieve leed certification on new construction is part of the base incentive or whether to simply offer that up as the additional 5% incentive above the base which is the way it's actually laid out now.
Then on the last -- I believe this is the last slide, coming to an end and we'll turn it back for public comment.
Whether to require a company to fill at least 50% of its new jobs with Travis County residents, whether to require a company to pay their employees, including their contract employees, a living wage, and that is currently in the policy.
And Travis County's living wage is $11 an hour currently.
Whether to require a company to contribute to health care coverage or whether to make such coverage accessible to the workforce.
Right now the policy is laid out to actually require the company to contribute.
And then this last bullet is just to catch any other issues that the court might discuss or the public might want to bring forward today.
So with that, that's our brief overview.

>> Any questions, court members?
This has been our working draft for five to six weeks, right?

>> Yes.

>> And in terms of action by the court, what's the expected or desired schedule?

>> Well,, of course, today is the public hearing and we can incorporate the comments I think or listen to the comments today, go back and incorporate things that we might wish to recommend to the court or that the court might like to direct us to -- to include, modify, delete.
And I would say sometime in the next two to three weeks we could come back if you would like to see us back that early.

>> Okay.
This is a public hearing.
If you would like to give comments during this public hearing, please come forward now, give us your name and we would be happy to get your comments.
If we could get you all to slide over just one chair, that will leave three chairs for residents.
Ms. Moffett.

>> I wanted to thank you and especially county staff for taking time to renew the economic incentive policy and allow the public to weigh in on this.
As I noted in my June 12 testimony, hundreds of companies relocate or expand in Travis County each year creating thousands of jobs, enriching our tax base without the benefit of economic incentives.
Austin ranked number 1 among the nation's 50 largest met throw areas in job growth over the past eight years.
It's 140,200 new jobs represented a 21.3% increase from the start of 2004 for 2011 alone Austin was number 2 in the nation in job growth, unquote.
With a 18% population increase Austin is one of the fastest growing cities and Travis County is clearly attractive to thousands of individuals and businesses on its own merits n fact, both the city and the county now struggle to keep pace with rapid growth even as we face shrinking vital resources such as water, transportation, education and health care.
For these reasons it is imperative that any future public economic incentives be used in extremely limited and highly strategic ways to address clearly identified problems and to meet a very high bar of classified outcomes.
Simply creating new jobs and adding to a tax base should not qualify a business for public incentives.
Every single area business does these same things every day and the county is certainly not prepared to give them all handouts.
Like many others across the political spectrum, which is getting wider all the time, I am personally strongly opposed to using public money to subsidize one private for-profit business over another but it appears the county is likely to continue this practice I'm offering the following recommendations to ensure an incentive policy that is as transparent, targeted, effective and fair as possible.
First, to provide a clear fact based framework for public incentive.
I strongly encourage you to ask county staff to work with the Austin-Travis County health and human services department, workforce solutions and u.t.'s ray marshall center to craft policies and mechanisms to ensure that our investments are carefully aligned with well researched need.
This should include identifying specific problems or issues the county intends to address with economic incentives and establishing clear benchmarks or other outcomes by which that success will be measured.
Two, assuming employment is a primary goal, and I certainly hope it is, identify target occupations that provide living wages and good health benefits and then create a plan to provide training or education required for these jobs involving other community partners as needed.
Three, create a mechanism to periodically reevaluate and adjust economic development policies as they will change over time and workforce training investments to ensure continued achievement of our goals and outcomes.
And finally, establish methods to monitor the effectiveness of any incentive granted and to provide clear steps for termination if the goals are not met.
Turning to the draft policy itself, I have 15 specific suggestions that I'm just going to go fast because you have this in writing.
First, I really encourage you to adopt a pre amable that clearly states the problems and conditions we're trying to solve and include a well defined rationale and to why and when the county should forego substantial revenue to subsidize one private business over the many other business interests already in our county.
2, establish a $1,000 fee per application as provided by state law and use this fee to contract with capcog to review the applications.
It's critical to have an independent source of analysis on these projects and I believe capcog is saluted to do.
This at the last meeting it was mensed a partnership with the city might be possible.
I think that's less desirable because their database doesn't through everything based on -- and can county may have conflicting goals regarding a proposal.
3, require all incentive agreements to include monitoring of specified outcomes with the provision to terminate if not met and I don't think you can overstate that one.
4, require economic incentives in the form of rebates rather than abatements because we want the get that money back if it's not working or rather we don't want to give that money out if it's not working and the incentive amount should be rebated only after all conditions of agreement are met.
5, retain the section in the county's former incentive policy which stipulates that an agreement cannot be entered into unless it meets all guidelines and criteria and that it will result in substantial immediate and long-term financial benefit to Travis County and significant financial benefit to other taxing entities within Travis County.
6, retain the previous county requirement that a company receiving incentives must guarantee a minimum of 500 new jobs and place within the first year of agreement.
I think 50 is way too low a bar for that.
And I was happy to see the job training component mentioned in there and companies used to train their employees.
Now they don't want to spend the money and that's something we should definitely give bonus points for and I would encourage full job training, not just they have to match 50%.
7, retain the ownership requirement in county's former incentive policy which prevents giving tax breaks to businesses who can relocate out of the county once their lease is up.
Certify a member of the Commissioners court is not involved financially with a project.
Of course, I don't think any of you would be but wise to keep that in there and you may wish to consider expanding that to include county staff as well.
8, retain the county's former threshold requiring a $100 million capital investment to qualify for incentives.
Again, I do not think this is the time we want to lower the bar.
9, retain the former section that prohibits granting incentives to development already underway as this section makes clear the county should not forego substantial revenue to a project that's already planning to be here anyway.
10, I would say mandate at least 60% of employees must be Travis County residents to receive incentives.
As we heard June 12 the county's existing major employers already exceed the 50% mark for Travis County resident employment and I think it's entirely reasonable to ask any business in line for taxpayer substitute to be required to exceed what is our baseline threshold for people not getting handouts and you may want to consider a narrowly drafted waiver to place industry in distressed area near the county border based on tarrant and bexar county divisions and it should not move the baseline.
We're getting there.
11, require all jobs created by a company receiving public subsidies to provide living wages and benefits.
We need to clearly define the term accessible as relates to health care and I want to remind you if we are giving a tax break to employers, we do not want to have to pick up the tab twice to provide health care and social services for employees who are basically the working poor.
12, providing the strongest incentives for -- may need to be an add on which can't certificate leed performance until after the facility is built.
Prohibit incentive agreements for any business that is currently being sued by the state of Texas, city of Austin, Travis County or other local governmental bodies including school districts.
Again, you would hope this would be common sense but I think it's safer to put it in there.
The cost of staff time for the life of the agreement.
The cost of providing infrastructure and services for new developments to come date the estimated number of employees who will relocate to Travis County for this business from another jurisdiction.
So wherever you make that percentage bar, we're talking about possibly 50% of their employees moving here from california and they are all going to want something.
So we need to know what those costs are going to be.
And finally the cost to the county or other local governments for health care or other services for any employees who will not be receiving living wage in health benefits.
If you adopt a strong provision on that, then you wouldn't need this.
Finally, for each application presented to county Commissioners for consideration, just the ones that reach you, county staff should identify the total amount of foregone revenue over the term of the agreement and illustrate the direct services for county residents that this same amount could fund in the following areas.
Job training for targeted occupations based on the average number of people that could be served for that amount of foregone revenue, health care, again, based on the average number of people who could be served, and public safety based on the average number of officers that could be funded.
And I think this last item is important for a clear understanding of the real life tradeoff that you will be considering when you are deciding whether to forego substantial amounts of tax revenue.
And then my only last thing is just looking ahead to encourage staff to report on the feasibility of creating a regional investment pool for economic incentives with other central Texas government bodies.
I think if done right it could greatly increase the negotiating strength of all governments in central Texas area and help -- and the practice of neighboring communities undercutting each other in a race to the bottom.
I'm sorry this was long, but your decisions will have far reaching impact and it's important to consider the impact and I thank you for your time and staff time.

>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]

>> There are several policies and streadges that are used depending on the economic circumstances.
On the local level economic policy is never very nuanced.
Locally every one is for economic growth and for more jobs, and everyone is for luring the next apple or advocating a new medical school, an f1 racetrack, a big new hotel or even better, two big new hotels.
And everyone -- just for those new companies and jobs, they were for subsidizing them.
And on a local level economic policy always seems to be for more growth.
And we act as if we're always in a recession and government has to keep its foot on the growth pedal.
The fact is that Travis County isn't in a recession.
In a June 16 article the statesman reported that Austin added 27,000 new jobs in the last 12 months, which was a 2.9% increase.
And alan miller with work first solutions said Austin continues to be a bright spot nationally in terms of new job creation.
On a national level everyone pretty much understands that if you keep your foot on the gas pedal the result is inflation, and everyone accepts that principle on a national level.
In recent council elections there was a lot of discussion about affordability and the fact is we're experiencing inflation in Austin and although no candidate explicitly talked about it, part of that inflation is caused by the growth rate we're having.
And when everyone talks about Austin not being as affordable as it used to be, what they're really talking about is price inflation here in town.
And the first place it really shows up locally is in-housing prices, and as more people move here demand for increases driving up prices.
In a June 20 article the statesman reported that housing prices have gone up 10% in the last year along are and mpf research which tracks multi-house prices, they predict rents will increase by 25% for apartments, and all of that is inflation, and it is affordability going away.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm not for no growth.
In my real life I'm a developer.
I just think that the county's economic incentive plan ought to be more nuanced.
Times are great now locally and we don't need stimulus.
I think the county ought to use that luxury and breathing room to correct some of the issues that the market isn't addressing.
Community action network, which you may be familiar with, you can google it.
They have what's called community dashboard report that they update periodically.
And it shows that 37% of Travis County residents are low income, and that number is even higher for city of Austin residents and both of which are higher than the national average.
There was a guest editorial in the statesman a couple weeks ago by a man named eric lange, and it laid out the disparity in income, infant deaths and wealth between african-americans and whites in Austin and Travis County.
So despite all the growth and job growth, not everyone is benefiting equally.
And now is a perfect time, while -- while the economy is hot, to not use incentives just to lure more jobs.
You should use incentives to incentivize to hire local folks who need a hand and provide benefits they normally wouldn't or to hire citizens from targeted areas.
The draft gives a company 40% just for showing up.
And then the policy adds a few percent, I think it was 10%, if they hired targeted folks or did, you know, some -- what I'll call did some good, did some things that normal -- normal business policies wouldn't do.
And the problem is that we've given away so much in the incentive just to lure the company, that we don't have enough left, 2% isn't enough to really incentivize a company to do the things that we would like to do as a community.
It's just too small.
We've given away 40% to get them here and the 10% that we have left to give away is not an incentive in a true sense of the word because it's not large enough.
So what I propose is that while times are good you reverse the policy, that maybe you give a company 10% to move here and use the 40% to actually do some good.
To me the fact that 37% of Travis County residents are low income is a much larger issue than our current job and growth rate.
I mean, we have almost 3% growth rate right now.
And in spite of that growth rate the fact that 37% of Travis County residents are low income means that the growth rate and what's happening isn't working for everyone.
So seems to me that it's time to try something new and just incentivizing companies to come here isn't doing it.
So I would hope that you take a much more nuanced look at how you use incentives and be aware of the fact that we already have massive job growth, and it is causing inflation and it is changing affordability in a Austin.
And as affordability gets -- as costs get higher in Austin, that 37% grows because it costs more for that 37% that's already low income to live here.
It compounds the problem.
So I hope you try something different and I hope you reverse the percentages.
There's -- we don't need to attract more companies.
If you're going to give incentives, use the big bulk of that money to do stuff that doesn't happen under normal economic progress.
Thanks for listening to me.

>> Well, that brings up a question for me on the $11 that we're calling the living wage, is that truly a living wage --

>> In Austin --

>> -- given the fact that 37% of the folks are still in poverty.
And so especially with --

>> As costs go up, that -- that's eroded.

>> And on I would -- I think I question the $11, simply because all entities are raising taxes in order to balance budgets, and then the utility rates keep going up.

>> As housing prices increase and -- it's a compounding effect because when the val -- the appraised value goes up, the taxes go up as well, so you have this kind of compounding effects on top of affordability.

>> I think one of the effects certainly I'm very much aware of, people cannot afford their homes so then they move out of the county, you know, and so we're not going to reduce poverty that way, by driving it out of the county.

>> Yeah, I think we still -- what happens is you have a bifurcation where people who are literally too poor to move to, say, huto, for example, end up stuck here.
Then we have social services to help them.
The wealthy then stay here and you start having a bifurcated county where the very high income, very low income and sort of a middle -- so we have a middle class moving out.

>> Well, the other thought that occurs to me, judge, is that if it makes kind of sense to use the money to reduce the poverty rates, therefore it would cut the expenditures for more social services more emergency care, and to try to, you know, improve that -- that group of folks who have those needs, that raise the budget costs for almost every entity.
So -- and thank you so much.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> Judge and Commissioners, patrick.
I'm serving this year as chair of the greater Austin chamber of commerce and I'm also very proud to have been your appointee to central health for the last eight years and have enjoyed working with you all in that capacity as well.
I'm here today speaking from the standpoint of the chamber.
The chamber's top priority is job creation, and when I say jobs, I don't mean any job.
I mean jobs with successful companies that are well-capitalized, have good products and services, and that can employ someone at the bottom of the scale and they have an opportunity to move up, because these companies are growing.
There are opportunities with these companies.
It's part of the american dream.
We've learned painful lessons in the past when we have ignored economic development, as we did in the latter part of the 1990s when we began to believe some of the things that I heard down here, that we were so good that we were just going to be covered up with companies wanting to come here without any stimulus, when, in fact, other communities were doing economic development, and in 2001 to 2003 Austin actually lost 38,000 jobs during that period of time.
We had ignored economic development, we had not properly distributed our economic development among a variety of different industries, and we suffered greatly when dot-com companies and semiconductor companies experienced adverse economic factors.
That's why the chamber in 2004 led an effort to create opportunity Austin.
We've been pleased with the pledge of more than $30 million to implement this comprehensive economic development strategy since that time.
Opportunity Austin is focused on building upon our assets and adding impacts to our economic health.
That's why we've identified targeted sectors, such as wireless technologies, life sciences and green industries.
We have partnered with our local school districts and community college to address the short-term and long-term workforce development needs of our current and future employers, and we're very proud of those investments.
We strongly advocate for maintaining, enhancing our community's infrastructure, including health care, so that employers are connected to customers, employees are connected to their jobs, and natural resources and other community resources are available to meet their needs.
With our regional perspective covering all five counties of our msa, we fully embrace and celebrate the success of every community in our region and we collaborate with each other, don't compete with each other.
Through opportunity Austin we placed our attention on primary job creation.
Those are the jobs that export goods and services to other parts of the nation and world while bringing hard-earned dollars back to central Texas.
Those dollars support our local economy and our many small business owners and their employees, as well as doctors, accountants, retailers, service providers and I must admit, even lawyers.
The strength of our region's economic development priorities has been its focus on measurable outcome, job creation and overall regional payroll.
Since 2004 these numbers are up and compare favorably against any other region in the nation.
This is something to be celebrated and is not an indicator that we should stop what we have been doing.
That has been achieved through strong partnerships at all levels of government.
The private sector has provided 90% of the funding for opportunity Austin's strategy.
Travis County has selectively used its previous policy, economic development policy, for job creation with capital investment and to good effect.
The city of Austin has a policy in place, which it's now reviewing, and has used that policy for targeted significant job creation.
In rare cases school districts have also partnered in job-creating opportunities with significant capital investment.
And all of these areas, the state has been a leading partner to secure these agreements through the Texas enterprise fund and the Texas economic development act.
We're in this together, and everyone needs to do their part.
The long-term prosperity for all of us in our region depends on economic opportunity, maintaining our competitive advantages and constantly innovating to respond to the rapidly changing economy.
As we learned before there is never a good time to rest on our laurels.
We thank you for your partnership and support of regional economic prosperity and encourage you to adopt a policy that continues us in striving for that goal.
Thank you very much for your service.

>> Thank you, mr. Hydrik.
Mr. Priest is next, and who else plans to give testimony during this public hearing?
Okay.
We've got two chairs available.
Mr. Priest?

>> Thank you, judge, Commissioners, speaking on my behalf.
Once again we seek corporate welfare and that's exactly what this is, nothing more, nothing less and here today seeming

>> [inaudible] on Travis County economic development incentives policy, and when we look at this, I think that there's -- this should always -- part of this policy should include that the entire Commissioners court must be present when voting on this, and I think that their policy should include it requires a super-majority vote.
We have five people on this Commissioners court, and as little as three people could make a decision, ultimately result engage only two people -- resulting in two people voting, as far as policy and I think that should be included in your policy and it should require a super-majority vote.
I think that this corporate welfare is one of the things that causes so much welfare, and each and of the when we see one of these type economic incentive policies, it's much like we see in transportation, the same people show up.
They appear to be two opposing sides such as like environmentalists and developers, but they're actually just a mutt and jeff so.
So basically what we're being told here is that the entire community, the entire county of travis will be extensively taxed as we have been and it will affect everything from health care to transportation to infrastructure and there's never been a win.
There's never been a win one time on any of these economic development incentive policies.
The community at large always loses, and there's always misinformation, and we've seen some of these same people who have given us this excellent advice before and we've seen the tremendous cost that's been associated with that advice.
But I'm totally against this corporate welfare and I'm also going to point out to you that many times our media basically interested in one thing and one thing only and it's their ratings, but they're not going to provide us the information either on this in a fair manner, but this is corporate welfare, plain and simple.
And so what I would like your policy to include is no incentives, and instead we should have development impact fees.
Leander, other communities in the states have told people that since your business is going to be such a burden on our taxpayers, that we're going to require you to pay development impact fees when you come to our community.
Austin is a great community.
A lot of great workforce, a great community, very attractive, the weather, transportation.
We're a hub, we have everything that every business would want and we've seen this in the city with motorola when they were looking to move and they said we don't even know what the mayor was talking about.
We were never going to leave, and so we don't know why he's thinking that he's kept us here.
It's just that we do this every five years, we think about if we're going to leave or not or go somewhere else.
But we have -- we have far too many things going for us here in Austin and Travis County to burden our taxpayers with this overwhelming expense that's going to come to us and given these -- and I think that there's many, many other -- many other things that many people have talked about, many, many times in many different forums, such as development impact fees and things of that nature that, you know, it's just -- it's just ridiculous.
But thank you anyway.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you, mr. Priest.

>> Mr. Farmer?

>> Yes, sir, judge.
Thank you very much.
Commissioners, it's nice to see you all this morning.
I'm gary farmer, 2012 chairman of the Austin economic development corporation and I'm here on behalf of our 350 or so corporate investors to urge the court to adopt an economic development policy that will continue to diversify our economy, provide job opportunities to central texans of all walks, and keep us competitive in what we know to be a global economy and a global competition for good jobs.
These agreements are not handouts.
It's not corporate welfare.
These are investments in companies who will come and bring jobs and wealth and prosperity to our community in central Texas.
Economic development agreements should be, they, in fact, must be, targeted and judicious.
We do need to be careful with them.
No question about it.
City of Austin has done 13 agreements over the past eight years or so.
Travis County, as I understand it, has done seven projects during a similar period of time.
So I think we have been targeted and judicious.
All of these agreements westbound performed-based -- have been performed-based.
They've had to create jobs, they've had to invest capital, and this needed to be a cash positive component, i.e.
Return to taxpayers.
Those are three very importantly principles this policy should take.
It's the historic approach Travis County has taken.
My recollection is that capcog did an analysis of the five or six projects which had been done up through 2008 and they gave the county a very glowing report about the success of the policy that the county had employed to that period in time.
We've got to remain competitive with regions across this state as well as communities around the country and around the globe.
The more stipulations you put into an agreement, the more complicated it becomes and the less competitive we become.
It is a free market system around this country and around the globe, and so we can do what we want to here in Travis County, but we can't change the reality of what others might do as well.
We've got to base our economic development policy on primary outcome goals: jobs and investments.
That's what we should be looking at.
So we appreciate and agree with the court and the draft policy with regard to a base approach with an opportunity for bonus consideration if they meet other priorities that we have in this community.
So we agree that the base incentives should be tied to capital investment.
That's very consistent with a system whereby your primary source of funds, Travis County's primary source of funds is with ad valorem tax.
So we agree with that.
We agree that providing a higher bonus incentive for more job creation is a good thing.
We think it is appropriate for the county to encourage values that are local priorities, such as location, green building, workforce training.
Those should all be bonus opportunities.
Again, this is very consistent with opportunity Austin.
I think clark mentioned that we have raised and are in the process of extending a little more than $30 million on our opportunity Austin program.
I think the court is aware but it merits repeating that over 30% of those funds are spent on primary and secondary education programs to keep our Travis County kids in school and keep them moving towards high school graduation and ma tricklation to some post-secondary -- ma tricklation to some post-secondary opportunity.
All of those things are very important.
The green industry aspect is also a critical aspect and we agree with all of those things.
We urge you to adopt them.
However there are some concerns we have with the draft policy and I want to share those with you at this moment.
As I stated earlier, the more complicated the policy, the more difficult it will be for companies to make their way through the policy, the less competitive we believe central Texas might be to attract some very critical companies to create the jobs that we need.
The local hiring requirement is a good.
The current draft requires 50%.
As we understand it, most communities in the nation do not have a provision of this nature in their policies.
We do know that others in Texas do have a provision, some do, but my understanding is that typically is that 25% and not 50%.
I think the concern for companies would be if -- even with best efforts, if they can't find the employees, if they don't exist here, they're going to be penalized for doing the best that they could possibly do, so there is -- it is a problem, and we're concerned about it.
We're also concerned with the provision discouraging leased space from consideration.
Many of our general manufacturing companies that have come to town are leasing space.
They can come and lease space and put millions of dollars of equipment, I mean, take a data center as an example.
They can lease the space and then put several hundreds of millions of dollars into that space and equipment, and for us not to be able to have the ability to -- to consider that in a regular way but to put a higher threshold on them seems to be fool hardy to me.
We've had some conversation about living wage.
Again, we're concerned about including a living wage into the policy, as we believe that could have a chilling effect on certain companies that would consider Travis County to locate, and we think it could have a chilling effect particularly on those companies who would provide jobs for people in our community who don't have college or post- -- advanced degrees.
Take u.s.
Therathane.
Most of their employees don't have high school diplomas so if you run a living wage concept up to a point where it is way above market, then you're going to have a chilling effect on those companies who would come and provide something that's in a lower pay range.
If you're adamant about a living wage, then we hope it would be compliant with the county's own policy.
I think you've got a predictable timeline.
We agree with this, that you've included a predictable timeline and we think that's important as well.
So your policy is moving in the right direction, it's getting there.
We appreciate your work on it very much, although we do have this -- the concerns that I've expressed and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

>> Any questions?

>> Thank you very much.

>> Thank you very much.

>> Yes, sir.

>> Jodie oshire?

>> My name is bill elshire and sitting here this morning I'm reminded what patience it takes to sit here and I used to be where you are.
Thank you for patience to bear more comments about this and from me of all people.
Gary farmer is my buddy and scott is -- they're people I still respect very much individually and I recognize the work that opportunity Austin has done, and it's -- there are people in this community give their time and do so very effectively in the private sector.
And they have achieved success.
I would disagree that tax incentives in each and every case, particularly expanded as you are, are a insist part of the economic development of this community but it is good to know that there are people out here who work on this from the private sector side.
I'd like to draw your attention to the bigger picture, rather than spend time on specific provisions of the proposed policy.
It won't do much good to try to edit a bad idea.
With no preamble our findings in your proposed new policy, we are left to wonder why this policy exists, when it would be applied and what problem it seeks to fix.
Considering how radically this policy expands the availability of corporate tax breaks, it appears that you think the Austin economy has suffered because we just haven't had enough tax give-aways handed out.
Apparently you're under the impression that the Austin growth rate is just not good enough and that we need the Travis County Commissioners court to step in and not only spur more growth but to subsidize growth with an unprecedented expansion of tax give-aways.
I doubt you can find any factual justification for that notion.
The worst mistakes in government come when government officials mistakenly believe the government needs to get involved in something when the government does not need to get involved.
Our local economy is smoking hot with an abnormally high population growth rate and not because tax breaks have been given.
Does it make sense for our local government to spur even more growth with tax rates for new businesses when Austin's population and growth rate is already about the best in the nation?
Corporate tax breaks should not be given at all when a local economy is producing sufficient growth without such tax breaks.
Now, if you want to use tax breaks, as they were saying, to do something good, if you want to use tax breaks to acquire new businesses to acquire those who are left behind in a smoking hot economy, then restrict the tax breaks to just that purpose.
But that's not what the new policy does.
It's a corporate welfare policy that would, according to u.s.
Census data, make perhaps 20 times more companies eligible for tax breaks under this policy than what it's been in the past.
It throws our corporate tax breaks around like candy from a parade float with no apparent strategic purpose.
If you adopt this policy and follow it, I predict you will set new records for giving tax breaks, on the one hand, to corporations who do not need a tax break, and on the other hand, to shaky businesses who can't qualify for bank financing in the private sector.
In the past corporate tax breaks were the exception to the rule, but when they read this policy every new business will expect a tax break from you.
Another application of a good tax break policy would be to help fill a gap and availability of particular types of jobs, for which we already have trained, unemployed -- or underemployed people ready to take those jobs that the free enterprise system is failing to fill on its own.
But this new policy is not targeted there either.
And worse, by giving tax breaks to new competitors, particularly by lowering the job threshold from a minimum of 500 jobs that must be provided within one year of the completion of construction, like under your old policy, to just 50 jobs spread out over time, you'll risk harming locally owned small companies who have grown their own business here over the years without any tax breaks.
You'll use their taxes against them, making them subsidize their new competitor.
And that's just wrong.
You should not get involved in picking winners and losers at such a narrow place in the free enterprise market.
Tax incentives, if used at all, should be reived for the big deals -- reserved for the big deals that make a whale of a difference in the local economy and spin off positive economic effects that are broad in their reach.
It doesn't make sense in Austin now to spur growth with tax breaks, but does it make sense for government to subsidize growth when growth does not pay for itself to begin with?
Think about it.
If growth that's the new businesses and new population, generated enough new taxes to pay for the incremental cost to the community for them locating here, then the average taxpayer would not be paying increased taxes above the cost of inflation, but we are.
Our budget and tax system does not impose the prices, fees or taxes that should be placed on these new businesses to help cover the cost to the community for the new road, new schools, more police, fire, ems, health care, more electricity and electricity capacity and more water treatment plants that this growth causes.
Did you notice that the head of Austin energy said recently that the electric rate increase was caused by the expansion of the system and the expense of growth.
Growth is putting the same kind of strain on our water resources and is why water treatment plant no.
4 was built.
You are free to ignore this advice, but mother nature will cast the final vote on this because our region is running out of water to support the growth your new policy will not only promote but subsidize.
But leave it to the government to first ignore the fact that growth doesn't pay for itself, but to also figure out a way to make it even worse for current residents.
Because growth doesn't pay for itself to begin with, these corporate tax breaks are subsidizing growth -- are adding to the increased cost of living for residents, shifting taxes to them.
A mathematical fact.
Shifting taxes to them that would have been paid by the new corporation.
If that weren't true, then taxes on current residents would not have gone up like they have.
This needs more work.
It's a grand community debate that has been started here, and you all leading the way, but you should withhold approval of this new policy and instead adopt a moratorium on county tax breaks until we have a reliable way of better estimating and auditing the true cost benefit and ripple effect of any particular corporate tax break proposal.
Local governments should not be giving tax breaks to a corporation that has the net overall effect of increasing costs to the community must bear, like roads, schools, water and other infrastructure.
Presently the web loci computer model is not reliable for this purpose and attention needs to be paid to developing a system that will accurately predict the full effect, cost and benefit, of corporate tax break deals.
And in my opinion, I think the county should adopt a moratorium on corporate tax breaks at the county level and stand up for the -- for Austin homeowners until the city of Austin grants a regular homestead exemption so that regular homeowners get a tax break first.
I thank you for your time.

>> Thank you.

>> Any questions for the judge?
Yes, sir.

>> My name is bobby jenkins and I'm the 2011 chair of the chamber of commerce, so last year, clark is this year and I've got the good job of being past chair.
I'm also a small business owner here in Austin, and I'm one of those guys that clark was talking about, so I kind of speak from a perspective of somebody who runs a business and employs folks and provides services here in Austin.
And I strongly support the region's economic development efforts.
I think it's important and has value.
Prior to being the chairman at the chamber I had the honor of serving as the vice chair of small business and before that the chair membership, and the chamber of commerce is made up, 85% of ore our members are small business owners with less than 50 employees, and I think that's important to understand what the business community's business perspective is.
And our local business and chamber members need to succeed when our regional economy is strong.
My business depends on the strength of the economy.
At the end of the day, if the economy is good my phones ring, people request my services, we provide a large variety of services to the public, and when the economy is good business is good.
A good example, when business is good I'm able to hire people and when jobs are created in this market, that creates rooftops and that creates opportunities for my services.
And when I'm hiring people, that creates jobs for them.
I mean, I look at myself as a job creator, and somebody who can provide services.
When the economy isn't doing well, obviously my business retracts.
And I'd like to address the point, I'm not one of those believers though thinks this economy is smoking hot.
I think the economy is definitely better than it's been.
I will say that central Texas weathered the storm of the economic recession better than anyplace else but I'm not a big believer that, oh, my gosh, everything is great and we don't need to worry about anything again.
I think we need to learn from the lessons in the past, that these things come and go and ebb and flow.
We need to be diligent, focused on job creation and we need to be focused on economic development that attracts businesses to this community so jobs will be created in this community.
The other thing I think is important, it's -- this is a competitive world.
I've been president of the national pets management association.
I travel all over the country.
I've got pearsall over the country that -- peers all over the country that live in other places that want to know, what does Austin do?
How are they so successful?
They're going to copy what we do.
They're going to be looking at Austin.
So it's going to be a competitive situation and we have to be in that game to create jobs.
I think it's important that we do so.
Also mentioned was opportunity Austin.
So this is where the actual business community steps up to be involved in economic development and I've been a supporter and investor in opportunity Austin for the first two rounds and now we'll have another round coming up in a couple years, but it's the business community's commitment to economic development, and I'm also proud of that opportunity Austin as was mentioned by gary, about what part goes to education and job training and those kinds of functions, in addition to going out and recruiting businesses to move to this area.
So we have to be vigilant.
We have to stay focused on that.
We can't not let ourselves fall behind.
We need to learn from the past.
Our region's unemployment rate actually today is almost double what it was before the recession.
So we're not all hunky-dory.
We're on a good trajectory.
We have a lot of good things, but I'll submit a lot of those positives are because of what our elected officials have done and what the business community has done.
So I encourage you to vote for economic development policy that keeps us competitive with those businesses who are looking to locate here and expand their businesses.
These policies at the local and state level, they've worked to create over a thousand jobs with billions of dollars in investment, and I submit that's good for this community.
I submit that jobs and then when those jobs come, our local businesses being able to hire those folks, I think is good for the overall economy and the overall well-being of the community.
So I agree with the concerns that gary farmer expressed about some of the details in the policy, but I encourage you to adopt a policy that rewards performance in creating jobs and expands the tax base, and I appreciate the work that you're doing on this, and I appreciate your consideration.
Thank you.

>> Any questions for mr. Jenkins?
Thank you very much.
Mr. Pena?
Mr. Pena?
If you would?

>> I'm jeff jack.
I'm here to speak today for myself.
I'm an architect with 40 years' experience in the business.
I've been a principal of 70-man architectural sure, 30-man architectural firm and I also work for myself now, but I've also been active in civic things and my comments today are from both points of view.
I want to thank the court for putting this on the agenda and having the opportunity to -- for the public to come and speak to it.
There's a lot of work that's been done in this proposal, and I think we have to be very careful about what's called the psychology of previous investment, where we've spent a lot of time doing something and we get to the end of it and there's some really big issues left, but we need to push through instead of stepping back and fixing it.
We need to take the time and get this right.
I saw mayor gus garcia in the audience earlier and 12 12 years when I was working for beverly griffith we had an ordinance we were working on and I turned to gus and said is it ready to put before the council?
And he looked at me with the smile in his eyes and said, no, jeff, it's not baked yet.
I think that's where we are with regard to this.
I've read the policy proposal and it raises a lot of questions and I'm not going to get into a lot of the details, but I do want to talk about policy.
And I think what former judge alshire was talking about is really about seeing the forest for the trees.
What are we doing here?
In section 28.002, it talks about that this policy does not violate the purposes of the policy, this proposal, but when you look in the authorizations section it says, stimulate business and commercial activity is the reasons for doing this.
Ms. Brower earlier had some comments about what was the intent of this, but I think the point is that we need a much clearer definition of why we're doing this.
And it reminded me of something I read many years ago from a political science professor at kansas, his name was thomas ?ietstead, and he -- nightstead.
A vibrant economy won't be sustainable in the absence of smart regulation designed to accomplish two primary aims: wealth creation and social justice.
The pursuit of wealth and justice.
It is the rule -- the role of the state to balance these two aims. ?Erdz, what's the role of government?
To balance the needs and wants of individuals and corporations and businesses against community needs.
This policy doesn't have a clear definition of what that intent is that the court is trying to achieve.
And I remember another quote, dwight eisenhower after the second world war said, the greatest threat to american dmok easy is the industrial military complex.
That sort of morphed over the last 50, 60 years to include the institutions of our financial world and even to the point where mr. Legstad says, the american economy is now clearly indisputably regulated by the few and for the few who now control the wealth of the nation.
And he goes on to say that the top ten taxpayers in america own roughly 72% of the wealth.
Between 1981 and 2005 the federal taxes on businesses declined by 43%.
Corporate income taxes accounted for one quarter of federal revenues in 1950 and today they contribute less than 6%.
We haven't had a major shift -- we have had a major shift in that balance, in the benefit of business as opposed to the individual taxpayer.
This disparity is being felt all over the nation, and it's resulted in a growing disparity in Austin, Texas between the haves and have-nots, of the middle class and the lower income people being pushed out of our city because of the cost cot of living.
As we look at that situation we have to ask ourselves, what is this policy doing?
Is it trying to reverse that trend nationally, statewide, locally, or is it simply facilitating it?
I think the question becomes, I think we've seen in the discussion about the 99% versus the 1%, what are we doing at government to bring back that balance?
Business interests have their agenda.
They want all of the cards in their hands.
We have the opportunity to make some sort of balance.
One of the things that I noticed in this proposal is that one of the intents of the policy is to help the disadvantaged in our community, but if you look at this carefully, there's essentially two strategies at play within this economic development package: direct help, which I think is wonderful, direct employment of the disadvantaged, job training, education.
Those are very positive things.
But I want to ask you a question.
How many of you believe in trickle-down economics?
Well, the second half has to do with giving the money to the corporations to bring the jobs to town, believing that that money will then trickle down to the most needy in the community.
And when we look at the list of targeted businesses, seven out of the nine probably fall into the area of trickle-down economics.
And as mr. Farmer said a minute ago, you know, job creation for people with educations and experiences that are at the higher income levels as opposed to the lower income levels.
Why is that?
I think it's been discussed earlier that we need to target the folks that we need to help.
When you look at the workforce solutions report, it really doesn't give you an analysis of what the unemployed and underemployed skill sets are in our community, and match those with the kinds of jobs that we need to bring to put those people to work.
Instead it's a blanket, you know, wish and a prayer that a new job is going it's going to create is going to actually work for the people that need it today.
I think we need to be much more focused.
There was also comment earlier about the fact that incentivizing growth at a time when we have steady growth is inflationary.
If you look at the tax records for 1990 to today, we have quadrupled the valuation of property in Travis County, four times.
In the same period of time we've about tripled the amount of revenue out of that tax base.
But the per capita tax burden on everybody has doubled.
It's very clear from the statistics that growth is not paying for itself, no matter how hot we think the fire is.
Why is that?
Where does the money go?
How come that the property tax owners -- homeowners today are having to pay higher property taxes in the midst of all of this growth?
How did that happen?
And yet we're being asked to provide more incentive to the growth.
It doesn't work.
We should really look at the market conditions.
If we're growing at a 2 or 3% increase already, which is more than our natural population growth cohorts survival, why are we trying to increase it?
We should set up a minimum economic growth that if they're sustained there we shouldn't have to have incentives to go beyond it.
I'm always a miewsd.
Business -- amused, business interests like to complain about government.
They like to complain about government interfering with the market, we're overly regulated, complicated contracts, all sorts of things, and that government is inefficient, big bureaucracies, and yet if you use business principles to deal with the business community as a government, they don't like that either.
So I was asking myself, as a business, what time would I ever want to have incentives?
And I realize that most startup companies need incentives to draw customers, to build their business.
And the other side of it is if you're going down the tube, you might want to throw in some incentives out there to try to stay alive.
Well, you know, Travis County is neither of those.
We're well established as a destination location.
We're in the top ten this all these polls.
We're there already, and we're not going down the tube.
Our economy is strong, it's diversified.
It's been diversifying successfully for many years.
So why do we have to have an incentive policy if we're in that middle where we're doing well?
I think judge alshire brought that point up again.
The proposal assumes we're going to continue to have growth.
You know, the Austin city council just approved a comprehensive plan where the basis of it is the assumption we're going to double in population to another another 150,000 over the -- 750,000 over the next 20 years or so.
Well, the last comment I want to talk about with regard to that is that we do have a problem.
It's called water.
What is the reasonable carrying capacity for our region for population accommodation?
And are we creating incentives that we're going to March to that cliff and jump right off?
Why aren't we looking at an overall strategy of what the carrying capacity of our region is with regard to accommodating future population and then devise this policy to facilitate that threshold and not go beyond it.
Just a couple real interesting details.
I notice that often in this proposal there's a lot of discussion about evaluations of the proposed development with regard to tcad appraisals.
Remember the study done a couple years ago that showed that commercial property is generally undervalued in the county by about 20, 40%?
Well, what that means is the property tax burden relies heavily on residential.
It's been shifted to the residential ratepayers.
So I'm wondering, one of the big problems that tcad says is that we can't get accurate accounting with regard to our commercial sales because they're not required by the state.
Are we going to require accurate accounting of actual purchase prices for land that then we use as the basis for our appraisal?
And the last thing, cost benefit analysis.
I looked at this web logic -- web loci, or whatever it's called, and I'm reminded of many normative indexing systems that take general information and try to come up with an algorithm that basically they can crunch and say this works and this doesn't work.
The city of Austin used one in imagine Austin plan called indices, and I'll give you a little hint.
When an infrastructure, when you look into that analysis, the infrastructure analysis was based on the assumption that our water treatment plants were downtown and the cost of pipe was the same.
It just mattered how far out you got.
The cost of putting pipe in an older neighborhood was the same as putting pipe in a green field development.
In other words, it didn't make sense with regard to the situation in Austin.
And I warn you that we need to have a much better analysis of the benefits that could be derived from this proposal, not based on some computerized general normative analysis.
Go back to my first comment.
This is very important for Austin, this is very important to the future of our city, our county.
Take time.
Get it right.
Address the issues that have been raised this morning.
I think that it's nice to come back in three weeks with some suggestions, but as gus garcia said, it's not baked yet.
Thank you.

>> Thank you, mr. Jack.
There are two seats available if you want to give comments during this public hearing, please come forward at this time.
Mr. Pena?

>> Good morning, judge, Commissioners, gus pena again, native east Austinite, proud united states marine corps.
I voted for a lot of these Commissioners.
I voted for bill alshire, a strong supporter of affordable housing but I ask and demand that everybody have a clear-cut definition of affordability.
What can be affordable for people from california and new york is sure as heck not affordable for people in Austin/Travis County.
And we're seeing that right now.
I strongly disagree with my -- I hope we're still friends, bill alshire, for saying the local economy is smoking hot.
Smoking hot for whom?
Are we talking about the low unemployment rate?
Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you something.
You want to know about homelessness?
You want to know about poverty?
You want to know about being unemployed?
Ladies and gentlemen, I work for the state, city, county, federal governments, irs, the va, the city of Austin, the state of Texas and of course the county as an Austin bailiff.
I can tell you one thing right now, this town is not affordable for us and a lot of people.
We have a lot of people becoming homeless because the housing is not affordable.
You're tearing down affordable units on riverside drive that I used to call the one on oltorf the last bastion but riverside is the last bastion.

>> [inaudible] lloyd doggett to be elected, I have about 20 kids and I saw some of the most dilapidated units out there, and I hope the health department goes out there and fines the owners so they can -- absentee landowners from california or new york.
We need affordable housing here.
We're talking about economic development.
That is very important.
Judge and Commissioners, if you remember in November and December '07, what did I come here and tell you?
I'm not going to pull the tape.
We're in a recession.
Nobody, not even the economists said, oh, no, we're in a prosperous economy yet the american-statesman came out in January and February of '08 and said we have been in a rescission since jan and December of '07.
Duh.
I've never been criticized by being highly intelligent even by some of my family members but I'm not dumb enough to think we're still in a recession.
We are in a recession.
You look at the unemployment rate, I told you for many years the unemployment rate is higher than what it is -- what it has been or the media has reported.
People give up.
They don't go to unemployment compensation lines because they're not eligible, they're not counted in the unemployment rate.
We need job creation, and I just did not start this four or five, six or eight years ago.
As judge alshire remembers I was talking about screaght creating jobs and affordable housing even in his administration.
This is not new for me.
You want to know about homelessness, joblessness, poverty, people who are hungry, kids that -- students that just graduated, not just high school students but college graduates, I'll give you a list of names.
You think I'm just jiefg you with words?
-- jibing you with words?
You're strongly mistaken.
I have supporting documents and names to tell you where the poverty is at, and it is just not in east Austin anymore.
Even in south Austin, southwest Austin, poverty is prevalent everywhere in this county, even your area, mr. Reeferseed.
The issue, what will we do about it?
We need job creation, jobs with a sustainable, prevailing livable wages with benefits.
You know what?
I'm going to be quite honest with you and I love mike and the chamber very well, because they've been inclusive.
In the past I never would have talked to anybody in the chamber but I'll tell you something, I trust mike walled on, david, and the rest of the crew at the chamber because I've learned a lot about them being inclusive with the committee as we speak.
It's very important to educate our people.
Education brings you a good job sometimes if there are jobs here.
Right, Commissioner?
You're nodding your head.
You've been there also.
I've been in combat.
How many times have we talked about jobs for students?
Seniors citizens can't get jobs anymore.
They need help.
So it is about job creation, livable wage, et cetera, and I'm not going to take too much of your time like other folks did because sometimes I ramble, as my wife says, I ramble sometimes.

>> No.

>> The reefer man says no.
But anyway I will say this.
Look at this policy, support a policy that will bring in jobs with good-paying wages, benefits.
Let's cut out the verbiage.
Let's revisit this policy.
But I tell you what, I strongly, strongly, strongly support economic development, job creation, affordable housing, apartments, less than $500 would be nice without any absentee landlords so we can hold them accountable and jobs for students or seniors who want to work so we can live a livable -- healthy lifestyle with benefits.
Us veterans, we need help also.
A group of veterans from afghanistan, and and iraq, they're paying a price.
They're suffering.
They've been in combat, something you've never heard of before, in vietnam, korea.
They've been pilots, but we need to support the community.
This is a growing community.
People are moving here saying, jobs.
They're taking a lot of the jobs here.
Let me give you a for-instance and I'll cut away, judge.
City of Austin approves projects, okay?
They bring in their own workers.
They don't hire from within.
So we need to make sure, and you made a good comment, even though I got emotional at that time, we need to mike sure locals are hired her, locals are hired here, and I cried because

>> [inaudible] needs a job.
What will we do about him, and his future and his girlfriend's future.
They're going to have a baby.
They can't afford a baby.
How many kids can tell you that they're hungry.
They need a job.
Okay, I'm going to cut it off because I have to go.
I have a life, but, you know, I'm supporting job creation, economic development.
Thank you, judge.

>> Mr. Reeferseed, anything new and different?

>> New and different.

>> Hmmm, well, one request I have is why not have these handouts?
I mean, you have all this information on this incredibly important detailed stuff and you all are checking your notes and everything, and I'm wondering, maybe I just missed t the backup materials.
What do I need to go ahold of -- what do we all need to do to get more -- get ahold of more of that info?
Please inform all of us how to get a copy of all the backup material beforehand.
That would be helpful, I think.
But I wanted to echo the previous comments, and -- about Austin poor folk who need help just to live here.
You know, we're -- we all love Austin.
It's just out of whack, and so big corporations don't, don't need precious taxpayer dollars to move here.
I mean, people want to move here anyway.
We need to replace this mind-set of corporate welfare that -- we need to just -- the corporate welfare boondoggles, through these boondoggles like f1, apple sweety pie deal, you know, all kinds of things.
I think that idea of development impact fees, that's something to take the edge off these tax breaks for the big dollars because we -- the taxpayers, we're the ones who need the money.
So we have to stop the race to the bottom for wages.
It's already out of hand here, and so we give these tax breaks to big companies who don't need it.
We need to stop using public funds to just pick winners and losers.
Don't we all understand that?
We can't do that.
It's counterproductive to business growth.
Like -- like, again, the f1, what a disaster.
We need to leave the details about development to businesses themselves and stop pretending we all know and stop trying to micromanage others.
This military industrial

>> [inaudible] media complex of criminals is like president eisenhower warned us in one of the -- and one of the previous speakers, it's -- it's exploding beyond expectations, and so we have to -- we have to use their knowledge, the business -- the enthusiasm and knowledge of the business investors to -- it beats any of our short-sighted slogans.
I mean, liberty and freedom, to make mistakes are essentially to economic growth and long-term development.
So why -- why only mandate 50% of the jobs.
I mean, who thought that up?
Why not mandate something much closer to 100% of these jobs?
I mean, they want a tax break to move here, so let's make some conditions.
Okay.
Give us some jobs.
Give us all those jobs.
I mean, the living wage is at least an attempt.
I'm generally against that type of thing, but the living wage here in this context is at least an attempt to resist this ongoing globallistic scheme to race to the bottom for the workers' wages.
So no more tax breaks to corporate special interest groups, a.
So stop picking winners and losers.
It's unfair, it's counterproductive, it's costly to taxpayers, and, hey, we taxpayers -- we can't afford it.
I'm testifying here.
B, business cycles are artificially created by banksters running the fed.
So don't count on always Austin being hot.
They can do anything they want to us.
Let's stop the race to the bottom for the wages and specifically by stopping this sanctuary city hogwash.
That's a suicidal agenda 21 liberal kind of not well thought out thing.

>> Thank you very much.
Mr.-- anything we've not heard multiple times already you'd like to say?

>> Judge, I don't believe you've already heard or listened to a lot of what I would say.

>> Oh, now, you might not agree but I listen to everything you say.
It's just that I don't agree with 95% of it.
Now, anything relative to this item?

>> Yeah.

>> Then please say it.

>> Okay.
I can't believe -- and by the way I have a dollar here for any elected officials that is in the habit of taking bribes.
Maybe I can --

>> Mr. Dillon, thank you very much for your comments.
Yes, sir, your name and comments?

>> My name is john price and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.
I come as a representative of the high tech community here in Austin, and very interested in the issue at hand.
A very, very brief background.
I'm from pittsburgh but I claim Austin as my home, Texas, and I tried to stay but I couldn't find a job in 1982, and left and ended up and started a company in california called trilogy with from friends of mine and brought the company here and created over a thousand jobs in Austin, of which many of those people today are leaders in the business community around -- all around Austin, and doing great things.
I then brought myself back to california, created another company in san francisco, a really neat city that I like a lot of things they do but wanted to get back home and brought the second company down here to Austin.
We're now down on sixth street.
So I'm a very active member in the community, believe in Austin, believe in Austin as a growing, wonderful environment for technology.
I just want to speak for a moment about why I think that's so good for Austin.
If any of you spent much time in san francisco or the silicon valley, obviously outside of a lot of the problems california has a state, they're not having problems up there in terms of the economy.
It's booming and it's very much because technology is, you know, very much a job creation engine right now, and it is where the money is flowing.
So, you know, we're talking billions and billions of dollars of investments in technology companies creating nos those jobs and technology companies creating benefit throughout.
Just a couple of comments.
I think for Austin I heard the word diversification.
I don't think Austin is all that diversified at all compared to a lot of places I've been.
I think we're incredibly diversified in technology.
We need to keep that growing.
We're blessed to have south by southwest here, to have an incredibly active chamber that is attracting, you know, companies and people across the country to want to move here and want to continue this trend that we're on, which is good growth.
It's clean growth, it's wonderful growth, it's education, it's bringing educated people here.
And, you know, there's a lot of comments that I think are negative towards companies.
I've worked my whole life and have yet to find a job that's not with a company, unless you're with the government.
So I have a hard time with the negativity towards businesses and companies.
And as far as stimulating the economy, if you look at what high tech people tend to do is they make some money and then they spend t we're terrible savers.
So we're the kind of people you want in a community because we make all kinds of money here and there and then we immediately spend it.
We spend it and go broke again and start another company.

>> [laughter] that's what we do.
I'm not saying it's smart.
We're really good at it.
Between companies we start coffee shops.
That's what we do.
It doesn't make any sense.

>> [laughter] but coffee shops hire people and all kidding aside, we are as a community incredibly involved with the development of the community at all angles.
Now, we have our biases.
We are education bigots.
We in technology, you can't really do it if you don't get an education so some of the programs I'm working with the chamber on, there's one called startup america but the chamber now has a ncial connection in Austin.
-- national connection in Austin.
I sit on that chair, start up america.
The entire focus is job creation for Austin and the Austin region and it's all kinds of jobs and helping all kinds of businesses, small businesses of all types, not just tech, but the tech people are out helping them.
We're out trying to give our time to mentor young companies and help grow them.
So first of all, when we throw around words like "apple" and googles and facebooks and stuff coming to town, I want people to understand, those aren't entities, these big bad entities that the 1%ers are accused of being.
Those are people, and those people are some of the most wonderful people that you could ever have in your community every one of them.
They're just wonderful people.
They're citizens that connect.
They give.
They give to their -- to charities.
They develop churches.
Everything that you would want.
So I think we have to stop trying to poke our finger in this mysterious 1% and really look that we work for the government or we work for a company.
We want companies that are good.
We want lots of them.
How proud can we be of whole foods?
It's a huge major corporation.
So nobody picks on them because, you know, we love them because their ours, but these other ones are just people too.
So I fully support the chamber and everything we're trying to do.
I think we want to treak more young -- attract more young people that are educated, that promote education, we want to help our schools.
I think we are missing a tremendous opportunity in not retraining our own workforce and you look at what we could do with Austin community college.
I think it's one of the greatest misused assets of this town and community.
I think we could create technology training programs for the underprivileged and get them into Austin community college at a very affordable way and get them right into these companies, where they'd have jobs and they could be programmers, jobs they could be proud of, get to go work in technology.
It's a wonderful life, it's a wonderful career, and then they can all open coffee shops.

>> [laughter] so I just want to say, for the tech community at large, as chair of the startup america program here, that the chamber -- the tech unit, we're big supporters of bringing these companies to town.
And just on one comment that was made earlier.
You know, this idea that somehow we're giving the taxpayers money -- given the taxpayers money.
I am absolutely not about raising taxes ever unless there's a real benefit that's measurable.
But let's look at what happens when we don't do that, and the other thing I'd like to say, we're involved with the arts here.
How many of us are happy with what's happened with our film industry here?
There isn't one anymore, we lost it to louisiana, and I met with Austin

>> [inaudible] on many occasions and it's because we couldn't be competitive with incentives and louisiana was.
So it's actually true that the country is competitive and we had an opportunity to have the next great film economy here, and for the most part we've lost it, and the type of jobs, you know, that that would have created, and it's all entirely because of the incentives that louisiana created and we're not competing with them.
So anything we're doing to compete on a national scale to grow this great city of ours, and county, I'm in support of and the tech community is in support of, and collins, and we're willing to help and we love this place and are happy to spend our tax dollars to keep making it better and help solve these problems. Thank you.

>> Thank you, mr. Price.
Thank you for your input.
I i move that the public hearing be closed.

>> Second.

>> All in favor?
That passes by unanimous vote.
We'll have this back on the agenda for action at the appropriate time.

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