Palisades Economic Development Is Not Yet Done

 

 

FOI Request – 4/13/2015 12:04 AM: I would like a copy of the Palisades economic development agreement.

City Secretary’s office response – 4/15/2015 4:26 PM: Please clarify that you want a copy of the final executed Palisades economic agreement.

FOI request clarification – 4/16/2015 10:40 AM: If the final agreement has been executed, then yes.  If it has not, then is there a draft of the proposed incentives to be read?  If there are other related documents I would like to read them.

City Secretary’s Office response – 4/19/2015 12:23 PM: A final agreement has not been finalized and I am not sure when it will be.  You may want to check back in a few weeks.  Pursuant to Section 552.206 of the Texas Government Code, draft copies are considered working papers and are an exception to disclosure.  Therefore, we have no documents responsive to your request. Thank you,

 

The first thing I would like to note is the response is timely and didn’t go the full 10 days for a response. It can be uncommon for open records requests to be filled this quickly with some local governments.

This second interesting thing here, it points out that there seems to be no information given to the citizens about an economic development deal before the deal is final. The backroom dealings without public notice or involvement would seem to me to not be in the interest of the public. There is no need for secrecy. So, hiding this information is not such a good public policy for local government, even though it is standard and “everyone else does it”.

Third, item, the deal for a Palisades economic development deal is not done. There is time for citizens opposed to take action and call their council members and let them know how they feel. Better than a call, would be emails to the official city council members addresses, not their personal email accounts. Use the so-and-so@cor.gov addresses. See http://www.cor.net/index.aspx?page=114 for their official email addresses.

Time for another rumor: The rumor is Mark Jordan and crew are going to or have flipped the land. Poof. No more conflict of interest concerning the eco dev agreement.

You just can’t make this kind of stuff up!