City Council Passes Willow Bend Zoning, Corporate Welfare, and a Retail Revitalization Policy

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On Monday, February 12, 2024 the Plano City Council passed three items that only help large businesses, not residents. It’s almost tiring having to report the same song and dance our council’s been performing lately, but hopefully we can change it in the future. As usual, I will report what was passed and discuss the potential consequences that will come with the decisions made.
First, the council passed corporate welfare to the tune of $2,403,975 in exchange for 152 jobs and a building renovation. The employees don’t have to reside in Plano or even Collin County. They can come from the seventeen surrounding counties. This will only increase traffic and wear on our roads. If council wants to give taxpayer dollars to companies, the least they could do is make sure the majority of the jobs go to Plano residents. This kind of government Fascistic intrusion into the free market only hurts the economy and is not fair to taxpayers and other businesses. That is because the government is helping some businesses by giving them an advantage over others. That creates an uneven playing field, which is not what good government does and is in opposition to a free market economic system.
The excuse some council members give for doing this is, “Other cities are doing it.” It’s the equivalent of, “But mom, all my friends are doing it!” Anyone who has children has likely heard this whine at one point or another. I would think adults could come up with a better reason for essentially bribing companies to come to Plano than, “Well they did it”, but here we are. This also means the companies are not picking our city for sound economic reasons, but for a payoff.
Other council members say the city will get more money in property taxes from that company after they redo the building. Tampering with the market in exchange for taxes hurts the economy and decreases tax revenues. That is because, as Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven wrote, “Subsidies [corporate welfare] usually don’t work as intended, and they often distort markets rather than fixing them. Robert Novak once said that ‘the mind‐set underlying corporate welfare is that of the central planner’, and yet we know that central planning does not work.” They also wrote, “Perhaps more importantly, subsidies change the behavior of businesses. An economist recently quipped to me: ‘I don’t know whether the government is better at picking winners rather than losers, but I do know that losers are good at picking governments.’ When the government starts handing out money, businesses with weak ideas get in line because the businesses with the good ideas can get private funding. Enron, for example, was able to grab huge federal support for its disastrous foreign investment schemes.” (Corporate Welfare Spending vs. the Entrepreneurial Economy, JUNE 1, 2012. https://www.cato.org/testimony/corporate-welfare-spending-vs-entrepreneurial-economy )
The next item to get passed is also corporate welfare, but for owners of retail property. It is called the Retail Revitalization Program. This program is made up of nine grants for retail property owners to improve or update their property. This would increase the value of the property, which would increase the property tax bills of the owners and increase tax revenues for the city. DOES ANYONE SEE THE PROBLEM?! Clearly the council didn't think this through. You see, while the tax bills would go up for the property owners, they would not be the ones paying the larger bills. The property owners will just raise the rent on the small retail businesses leasing the spaces. This will cause the small business owners to do one of four things. Either they will raise their prices, lay off workers, close down, or move. All four are bad for Plano. Raising prices in a time of high inflation will cost more for the consumer, laying off workers will mean people on unemployment, closing down stores will bring hardships to the renters, workers, property owners, as well as lower sales tax revenues to the city of Plano, and moving to a location out of Plano will mean lost sales taxes and jobs. Closing stores also means empty retail spaces which brings blight. I realize the people on city council are not economists, but could they at least think about what higher tax bills do to the people of Plano? Could they stop only thinking about the city coffers, and start also thinking about the people?
The last item that passed was the Willow Bend Rezoning. This blog has already written about this zoning case in the article P&Z Passes Willow Bend Mall Zoning (https://www.planospoliticalpitbull.com/posts-about-council/pz-passes-willow-bend-mall-zoning-case), so feel free to read that to learn more about this case.
The developer will still need the approval from the FAA to build in the line of the private airfield. Whether they get the approval or not, the new zoning stays with the property.
This redevelopment, like Collin Creek Mall, will need major infrastructure improvements. That makes this redevelopment ripe for a TIF (Tax Increment Financing Zone) or something like it. Which means all those tax dollars would not go into the general fund. It would go in a separate fund, and the money could only be spent on that  Zone. TIFs or funds like them are just more corporate welfare. They don’t help the city or the residents, just big businesses. So, keep your eyes out for that on the council’s future agendas.
To learn more about corporate welfare and the problems with it go to the video at the bottom of this post.
This is Mary Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off.