Don’t expect tax incentives tied to livable wage in Kyle anytime soon

Last week the San Marcos City Council began requiring that any business seeking municipal tax incentives for bringing new jobs to the city must pay a livable wage — specifically, at least $15 an hour — to qualify for those incentives and, in so doing, urged other Hays County communities to follow suit. Based on exchanges I’ve had with four of our seven council members, I don’t expect Kyle to be one of those Hays County communities.

Mayor Todd Webster said he feared passing a similar regulation would put Kyle at a competitive disadvantage in attracting new business. Council member Shane Arabie told me he wants the city’s economic development procurers to have plenty of flexibility when it comes to bringing jobs to Kyle. Diane Hervol said more research needs to be done before Kyle attempts such an approach and Daphne Tenorio said she is concentrating on other priorities and acknowledged, even though she personally favors such an approach, there would be little, if any, support from other council members to pass an ordinance like that here. Mayor Pro Tem David Wilson and council members Becky Selbera and Damon Fogley ignored my requests for comment on this subject.

According to the Texas State University daily newspaper, "San Marcos City Council passed an amendment to the city’s economic development policy Feb. 2 to require any jobs qualifying for incentives to pay employees a $15 hourly minimum wage. City officials will only grant job-based incentives to businesses that pay employees a living wage and include employer-sponsored health care. Council members agree the new policy will benefit the community."

The paper quoted one council member, John Thomaides, as saying: "I’m hoping other communities in the region follow suit, It sure would be nice if we had an Austin-San Antonio corridor that valued our people as much as we value our profits or incentives."

Sorry, John, but that 15 bucks stops here.

"I do not have any intention of pursuing a blanket policy that would establish such a condition or any other condition that would tie our hands when trying to recruit businesses to Kyle," Mayor Webster said. "Economic development is competitive and to be successful I don’t believe that Kyle should establish unnecessary and pre-determined conditions that would hamper our ability to successfully compete. Job creation is certainly one of the city’s economic development goals but so is expanding the city’s commercial tax base. The latter being necessary if we are to ever provide meaningful tax reduction. Establishing a blanket requirement would likely hinder our efforts to bring balance to our tax base and in turn, would hinder our ability to provide future tax relief to residential tax payers."

"Any ordinance like that pins you to a rule," Arabie said. "I’m not opposed to setting something like that as a guideline, but different projects present different challenges. Guidelines like this would be something we could use as a negotiating tool, but I am opposed to an outright policy change."

"I am not sure how well an ordinance of this nature would be greeted by my colleagues," Hervol said. "At this point in time, I am not prepared to bring it before council. I would like to do research and get pertinent feedback from all the cities that have implemented such an ordinance."

"San Marcos is setting the bar high and I think it's marvelous," Tenorio said. "I would love to introduce this type of ordinance in our city. However, I know I wouldn't have the support to pass it. Right now I am concentrating on transportation for our disabled and elderly, stopping the horrendous development that has been proposed at Yarrington Road and assuring our water wastewater plant is able to sustain the current constituency, adding to it prior to approving additional development. I certainly think a minimum wage ordinance tied to taxpayer aid is a great idea that could be highly beneficial to our citizens!"

There you have it. Some like it. Some don’t. But all agree it ain’t happening here, at least anytime in the foreseeable future.