Citizens Oak Ridge

Planned DFET speech to Oak Ridge city council for 2/19/07

Comments by Tim Holt

  1. I am speaking on behalf of Democracy for East Tennessee. DFET is a socially progressive, fiscally responsible, grasroots activist organization dedicated to restoring government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

  2. Reports of our research on Economic Development . Have been provided to all city officials Have been published in local papers Can be found at www.citizensoakridge.com or from timholt39@comcast.net

  3. A financial grant to support Crestpoint may be unnecessary. They may come anyway.
    CEO's at other locations admit,after-the-fact, government assistance was not important to their decision.
    HIP Healthcare’s CEO admitted their $10M grants were not a factor in their location decision.
    Pfizer executives explained that a $46M subsidy did not drive their decision to expand.
    American Express says it would have stayed even without a $25M grant.

  4. Optimistic estimates of income or cost are likely to lead to Crestpoint project failure
    This project proposal did not include an unbiased expert economic analysis.
    Following are some examples of loss due to optimism we found in internet research
    Cabellas promised 4.5M new visitors/yr to get over $30M in tax benefits. They didn’t produce..
    A Pittsburgh store got $70M based on high projections of tax revenues. The store closed, leaving the city taxpayers a bill.
    United Airlines used $320M of taxes for a special airport building. They left a bill and a hard-to-rent facility .

    An Economic Policy Institute study of hundreds of cases found public investment in locating private business was ineffective.


  5. Of all economic development, big-box retail stores (like Target) rank among the least effective.
    Big box retail exports profits instead of recirculating them for multiplier effects.
    Big boxes provide jobs that are overwhelmingly part-time, poverty wage, without healthcare.
    Big boxes are detrimental to small business, often providing a death-knell for them and their revenue.
    In central Ohio, a study revealed that in seven of eight communities they drained municipal budgets,
    requiring more in services such as police protection and road maintenance than their generated revenue.
    Many products sold at Target produce slave-wage manufacturing jobs in China, not jobs in the US.

  6. On the basis of our evidence, we recommend:

    • That Council reject city deficit spending to provide a grant for private Crestpoint development.

    • That citizens and government wait for a retail project that will pay its own way.

    • That future economic proposals include unbiased expert analyses for better decisions.

    • That the city initiate a local market study to provide a sound basis to evaluate future retail proposals.
    7. Read More: