Kyle’s No. 1 economic development problem

There are many ways to measure the economic vitality of a city and the long-term economic sustainability of a community. One of those tools is to compare a city’s daytime population to its nighttime population. If you want a city that’s a magnet for jobs, than the daytime population should be greater than its nighttime population. If you don’t care that much about jobs, then the nighttime population will exceed its daytime numbers.

According to the numbers, Kyle hates jobs.

Now conventional thinking would lead you to believe that the so-called large metropolitan areas would have higher daytime populations and those suburban communities that surround them have nighttime populations that are higher. But that’s not necessarily true. Richardson and Plano, two cities on the northern side of Dallas, for example, both have higher daytime populations than nighttime. Richardson’s is an astounding 37 percent higher; in Plano it’s 10.6 percent.

But of more importance to Kyle are the numbers from cities along the I35 corridor north and south of Austin. The daytime population of Georgetown is 4.7 percent higher than its nighttime numbers. Round Rock’s daytime population jumps 10.7 percent over its nighttime number. South of Austin, San Marcos has 17.1 percent more people in the daytime than at night, New Braunfels has 5.7 percent more. Even Buda’s numbers are higher, albeit only slightly: 1.5 percent more during the day than at night.

But in Kyle, the daytime population plummets 31.9 percent below its nighttime population. That means almost a third of all the people who live here work someplace else. Imagine how high that percentage would be if just the working-age population was measured. Kyle is the only city along the I-35 corridor between Georgetown and New Braunfels with a nighttime population higher than its daytime population and that difference — 31.9 percent — is huge.

Kyle needs jobs. And not more of the minimum wage retail/restaurant jobs that have been added of late, but professional jobs, the type of jobs that keep that 31.9 percent from commuting to another city to work.

It’s this lack of jobs that causes a measly $13 million bond program to increase property taxes here by 15 percent while a $104 million bond sale in Georgetown doesn’t move the tax rate needle one iota.

As I noted earlier, according to figures compiled by Community Impact, the ratio of residential to commercial property in Kyle is 85-15.

Here’s a challenge to our city leaders: Develop and present to the citizens of Kyle within the next three months a comprehensive plan and a reasonable, but aggressive, timetable to reduce the nighttime-to-daytime deficit percentage to single digits and that residential-commercial ratio to 60-40.