Questions in the past week about how the Rockdale County government was benefiting from the work being done by the Conyers Rockdale Economic Development Council led to an economic update Tuesday morning during the Rockdale County Board of Commissioners voting session.
CREDC Executive Director Marty Jones took that time to let the board know the county was getting a significant return on its investment to the Conyers Rockdale Economic Development Council.
After demonstrating how ROI is calculated, Jones says that Rockdale has received a 130 percent increase on its annual $125,000 investment just from having businesses expand and move into the area because of the county taxes paid to the county government.
Jones then estimated that if 50 percent of employees hired at these businesses decided to live in Rockdale and if 50 percent spend their earned cash in the county that could raise the ROI up to 435 percent for the county.
Post 2 Commissioner JaNice Vaness suggested that those numbers were being conservative and that the ROI could actually be higher.
Jones agreed with her saying he wanted to start low for his first presentation and then bring actually numbers for his next presentation.
Overall, the total community ROI, benefit to the City of Conyers and Rockdale and School System, is about 636 percent.
How much does the county get?
For the presentation, Jones focused on numbers related to the Hill-Phoenix, Anthony International, ASI and ABC Compounding businesses. Each company has either relocated to Rockdale or expanded an existing building already here.
Collectively in 2014, these four businesses paid $919,000 in taxes, have $55.8 million in payroll and employ 1,390 people.
At least one of these businesses, Hill-Phoenix, is located within the city limits, but Jones says that doesn't matter when it comes to taxes being paid.
"I think it's important to know, whether a business is located in a corporate limits or outside of corporate limits, in the unincorporated area, they pay the exact same amount of school taxes. They pay the exact same amount of county taxes," he said. "The only thing that changes is if they pay city taxes."
But, Post 1 Commissioner Oz Nesbitt wants citizens to stop thinking solely on how the tax money is being divided up between the city, county and school board, and focus more on how the whole community is benefitting from the collective pot.
"If we're going to ever become a world class community, it's important to look at the community as a whole and not looking at the slice of pie for the city, county and school board," he said. "We have to be thinking in a world class direction that this is a community effort, and in order to be a player with what's going on in the I-20 corridor to usher in opportunities, we must empower this organization (CREDC) to be our ambassador for all of Rockdale."
Other forms of Return On Investment
Both Nesbitt and Van Ness made a point to mention that tax revenue isn't the only ROI happening in the community.
"I just want to make sure that I point out that whether a business is physically or geographically located in the city limits or whether they're in the unincorporated areas of Rockdale county, if this business is employing Rockdale County residents, whether they're a city resident or a county resident, there's a direct benefit right here to this community by putting those people to work," said Nesbitt.
Nesbitt added that with each new business in the area, they all have to hook up to the county owned water and sewer lines. These are a few of the reasons why Nesbitt has advocated for the county increasing its investment into the CREDC to $250,000.
"I think the average person in the community who are concerned as it relates to economic development, they are not going to get bogged down with numbers and stats," he said. "People are interested in what's happening, tangible opportunities, jobs and that kind of thing. That's where the rubber hits the road.
After Jones mentioned that Hill-Phoenix has incentives in its deal to not pay any property or school taxes for ten years, Van Ness, who didn't agree with that type of incentive, said it was justified because of the benfits of having the company in the area.
"What I think is important in the end is that we saved a lot of jobs," she said. "We saved property that would've been empty in Rockdale County. At the end of the day, that number of employment is a great asset to have right here in Rockdale County."
At the end of presentation Board Chairman and CEO Richard Oden made a recommendation that the CREDC should make monthly or quarterly updates to the board to inform the board and the public about the business happenings of the CREDC.
