03.01.22 Work Session - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

City Council Meeting Minutes March 1, 2022 The living wage was replaced by the county all industry average wage for the county in which a business is or is going to be located. Those amounts are $43,394 for Mays County, $38,338 for Caldwell County, and $45,886 for Guadalupe County. The EDSM Board had multiple meetings to discuss proposed updates to the policy. There was a lot of great discussion looking at items from a number of points -of -view. The recommendation resolution included in the packet was passed 6-3 at the January 28 meeting. There are details in as to comments why certain board members mentioned they voted for or against it, but the primary concern that was shared involved removing or keeping the M&O limitation on the tax rate. The final version that was passed by the EDSM Board does recommend keeping the total tax rate on the table and not limiting it in the policy to only the M&O portion. The proposed version staff is bringing to you today does include that limitation. The proposal brought by staff removes what was Exhibits A & B which had the preferred scenario map and the strategic initiatives. Initially, staff thought to include those documents within the policy for easy reference by any applicants; however, because both of those documents can change or be updated by City Council separately, it was recommended to not have them embedded within the policy but to ensure that they are on the city's incentive page so they can still be referenced easily but not require the policy to be updated every time there is a tweak to one of those documents. Then the last two changes came about as staff continued to work on what the processes and incentives would look like. There is some enhanced wording on the processes the grants would follow along with updated wording for the Downtown Co -Marketing Fund. Discussion was held on the proposed policy change related to the potential to limit tax -based incentives to only the M&O portion of the tax rate. The current total tax rate is 0.6030 per $100 valuation. The Maintenance and Operations portion, the part that is used in the General Fund for normal city operations, is currently 0.4076 (or 67.6%) of the tax rate, and the Interest & Sinking portion, the part that is used to service the debt of the City, is currently 0.1954 (or 32.4%) of the tax rate. If there is a project with a $10 million capital investment and those improvements are appraised at that same amount, the M&O portion of the taxes to the City would be $40,760 and the I&S portion would be $19,540, for a total of $60,300 rebated to the business if a 100% incentive is given. With the current policy, if an incentive is offered from the City of San Marcos Page 4