What I have learned from an Incentives and Benchmarking Analysis--Lesson 3

Part 3 of 3 Key Lessons

For a recent client, I conducted an Incentives and Benchmarking Analysis for the economic development organization and two of the cities in its territory.  The goal was to understand if incentives which had been granted to a number of projects over the past fifteen years had done as promised—created value for the community.  Several lessons were learned from that project that I will share over time.  But three key lessons learned were: incentives only create a return on their intended use, incentives never left the community worse off, and communities do not have processes in place to track incentives well.

The final lesson was that communities do not have processes in place to track the incentives they are given.  In one of the small communities I worked with, the finance director was able to give me the information quickly and easily on two projects.  Yet, had there been more, or when this thirty-year veteran finance director retires, it could be a problem to locate the information.  In the larger metro area, the finance directors were able to give information piecemeal, and it was great information.  But it was apparent that they had to look in multiple places, take several staff members to pull the information, and ultimately were without some project information. 

              Regardless of how incentives are portrayed in the news/political word today, they do show a return for the communities who use them wisely, and do increase accessed value and tax revenues.