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----PARIS,TEXAS, TOPIX FORUM DISCUSSION---We reported on the PEDC?s (Paris Economic Development Corporation) plan to get a coordinated plan through a unified plan by paying a Gregg County, Texas, firm to act as "third-party facilitators" at a meeting or two.

Which, in and by itself, is a heck?ova plan ?
Taxpayers, who pay the PEDC?s bills, coughed up at least $1,710 for the consultants. Evidently, an outside firm was needed to ?facilitate? the meeting to get a plan to get a plan, because. . . ?
Surely, the PEDC doesn?t believe no one in our Paris-Lamar County area knows how. . .?
The PEDC also have taxpayers on the hook to pay for a study by an Oklahoma retail development ?expert? they hired, and to pay for a long-term contract for his help in soliciting retail businesses to Paris (see Drowning on Dry Land).
Why is the PEDC even considering bringing in competition for local merchants and businesses? They have enough problems without the PEDC adding to them. The PEDC should be helping, not bringing in competition. It is as if the PEDC has never heard of the ongoing retail campaign urging everyone to "Shop Paris". (But, why is the PEDC involved in ?retail development?? It?s NOT something they're chartered to do...)
A PEDC employee, a ?community development specialist?, has moved or is moving to Georgia. The PEDC will pay her $800 per month for the next 10-months to handle "electronic media? and to maintain the PEDC website. But according to previous reports, the website and its maintenance is being done by CDSuites of Longview, Texas ( see job_creation).
And, no, it is not the money: It is the thinking that leads to the actions -
Taxpayers, through the PEDC, have guaranteed for ten years, $5.8 million for the financing of existing and new debt and around $1.8 million for operating capital for a local firm. The firm?s headquarters are in Paris, but they also have offices in Dallas, Waco, Sulphur Springs, and other Texas communities, as well as in North Carolina.
In exchange, we?re getting a promise of 25 new jobs within the next five years. And the PEDC has given a $105,000 ?cash incentive? for another 10 jobs at the company?s headquarters.
No report of how much money or what kind of guarantees, if any, taxpayers in the firm?s other locations chipped in or provided.
Shouldn?t Paris taxpayers know if the guarantees and/or operating capital they?re providing will be used to help underwrite the firm?s business operations in those communities? How could it not help . . . ?
But, how would we know?
These PEDC actions signal it can do what it wants, and spend the taxpayer?s money for whatever purpose they want, as long as they have some kind of semi-plausible deniability. This is a moral hazard, and weakens confidence in what they say and do.
In all these actions, the PEDC is funding jobs and job creation opportunities for communities ? and states ? in competition against us!
And the PEDC calls what they?re doing ?Economic Development"?
Our question is, ?For whom??

Source: http://waltip.blogspot.com/2012/08/bill-blacks-eye-popping-opening_25.html

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