By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce President Patt Lilly defends the use of business tax breaks as a competitive edge to bring jobs to the community.
“Economic development is a competitive game and most communities, if not all, play it in some way or another,” Lilly says.
Lilly says St. Joseph typically provides businesses with a break on personal or real property taxes; normally a 50% cut.
“We use incentives,” Lilly says. “We use incentives to attract new businesses to the community, like Cereal Ingredients earlier this year. But we also use incentives to work with our existing companies to help them grow here.”
Lilly says even though the community might give some tax revenue away for a period of time, it historically begins reaping the benefits of landing a new business or watching an existing business expand almost immediately.
Lilly suggests the opponents of tax giveaways might be a bit short-sighted.
“And I think you always have to be careful in these kinds of discussions not to cut your nose off to spite your face,” Lilly says. “Maybe it makes you feel good, but it’s not going to do much to grow your economy.”
Lilly says tax breaks are given to businesses large enough to either create additional jobs or to secure jobs already here.
Lilly says he understands some oppose giving tax revenue away, but he doesn’t believe it’s a black and white issue.
“There’s always a cost to a company in doing a project, whether it’s an expansion project of an existing business or a new project,” according to Lilly. “I think, demonstrating as a community that we’re willing to work with the company to demonstrate that they can be successful in our community is an important piece to it.”
Lilly says the bottom line is that St. Joseph provides tax breaks as incentives to provide good jobs for area residents.