Some at city suffering from premature exclamation

So I was having this conversation one night last week with one High Ranking City Official (who henceforth shall be referred to as HRCO and who shall remain nameless only because this person probably did not know elements of this conversation would be made available to one and all at the time that it took place). Anyway HRCO asked me if I was planning on attending Tuesday’s groundbreaking of what is now being called the Hays Logistics Center.

This apparently is a pretty big deal. It will take place at 10 a.m. on that land being developed as a business park across Kyle Crossing, north of the Home Depot. Eventually, it’s supposed to be a two-building complex, although, officially, this groundbreaking will be for the first of those two, a 220,000-square-foot structure scheduled to open by the end of the year.

I’m not much for groundbreakings. I appreciate their ceremonial content, but, mostly they rank just below hairstyling for me as a spectator sport. Besides, as I told HRCO, by nature I’m a night person who usually calls it a day around 3 a.m. and tries to be awake and functional no later than the crack of noon each day. Watching dirt being turned at 10 a.m.? Not so much. Not only that, I said, but I have it on good authority an even bigger announcement of a more important economic development deal for Kyle is about to be unveiled any day now.

"That’s true," HRCO, who is more than HR enough to know about these things, told me. "But this one is pretty significant as well."

"I guess that’s true," I replied, "since I learned it wouldn’t even have been possible had we not had That Triple Freeport Thingee."

I guess I should pause in this narrative to explain the term That Triple Freeport Thingee. Section 11.251 of the Texas Tax Code exempts facility owners from having to pay property taxes on "goods, wares, ores and merchandise other than oil, gas and petroleum products" providing those "goods, wares, ores and merchandise" leave the state within 175 days after they arrive here. Section 11.437 of that same code extends that same exemption to "’goods in transit’, described as goods acquired inside or outside the state, detained at a facility in which the owner of the goods has no direct or indirect ownership of the facility, detained for storing purposes by the person who acquired or imported the property, and then shipped to another location in or out of this state within 175 days." These tax breaks are called "freeport exemptions." Now, as most property tax payers know, the three primary collectors of property taxes are the city, the county and the local school district, with that last collector collecting the lion’s share of the taxes. It takes all three of those entities granting those just described exemptions for a community to have That Triple Freeport Thingee. For a long time, only Hays County and the City of Kyle granted those exemptions here which sent major developments such as the Samsung semiconductor facility that went to Manor and the Amazon fulfillment warehouse in San Marcos looking for those more economically favorable locations. After a steady period of portraying the Hays Consolidated School District as the villain in the area’s pursuit of economic development and genuinely working really hard to make the school district look bad and feel guilty, the no-growthers on the school board were ultimately beaten down to the point where they finally gave in last year and granted this "freeport exemption," finally giving this area the much desired That Triple Freeport Thingee.

However, when I credited That Triple Freeport Thingee to HRCO as making the Tuesday groundbreaking possible, I was stopped short.

"Well, that’s not exactly true," HRCO told me.

"What do mean ‘That’s not exactly true’?" I replied. "I mean the City’s official announcement about this project — right there on the City’s web page — reads, and I quote, ‘Both developers added that this project would not have been possible without the passage of the freeport tax exemption by Hays County and Hays Consolidated Independent School District in 2016 and 2017.’ (Side note: I have not been able to contact either developer — Hillwood Properties out of Dallas and HPI Real Estate Services & Investments of Austin — to determine if they did truly say this.) And our own, highly trusted, mayor tweeted ‘This project made possible by the @HaysCISD school board’s freeport vote last year.’ Are you telling me these folks are engaging in some form of hyperbole?"

"What I’m saying is Triple Freeport really doesn’t factor into this project," HRCO said. "For all practical purposes, this is, right now, just going to be an empty building. Now, perhaps some future tenants in those buildings will be able to use the freeport exemptions. And perhaps the developers are building this project because they believe the exemption will help them land tenants. But for right now, this is just going to be an empty, leaseable building that didn’t require triple freeport to be constructed,"

I found the entire conversation terribly deflating. Next thing I know someone will be telling me there’s no Santa Claus. Funny thing about this new knowledge, however. It actually made me decide to set the alarm Tuesday morning so that I can be semi-awake enough to attend the groundbreaking.

However, I still draw the line at hairstyling tournaments.