The issue about which I was extensively (and unexpectedly) quoted in Sunday's Killeen Daily Herald, the city grant of $1.6 million to the Killeen Chamber of Commerce and the Killeen Economic Development Corporation for another two years, passed without opposition and almost without comment at this afternoon's Killeen City Council meeting. I don't oppose the funding, but I have questions about it, and I think the City Council should have some as well.
An organization with so vague a purpose as "economic development" must necessarily lack short-term measures of success. "We wined and dined X corporation, but they decided to build a factory in Reno instead" might be considered a success or a failure: Success: we got X to consider Killeen; failure: they didn't bite.
But over a long period of time -- say, the decades KEDC has been funded -- it ought to be possible to measure what economic results are attributible to the money Killeen has provided the organization; or at least forecast the results we might reasonably expect in the future from such an investment. That is the documentaation that I want to see, and that I think City government should want to see, and verify, as well. It would make sense for the information to be validated by an outside party.
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