(Memphis) You could call it robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Memphis and Shelby County are giving millions of dollars in tax incentives to get a company to move to Memphis.
Here’s the thing — that company is already in Arlington, but is willing to abandon it for the big city.
The massive glass building sits empty in East Memphis, but that’s about to change.
Wright Medical Technology is moving its headquarters 40 miles from where it sits now in Arlington.
That’s about one job per mile.
It’s a good move for the company, because Memphis and Shelby County are freezing tax levels for the medical device making company saving it almost $5 million.
Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland said, “I did have some questions about it, the fact that they were already in the county. Do we really need to give them a pilot?”
Strickland was part of a special committee and agreed these sorts of incentives are worth it but the city and council gave out more than anyone else in Tennessee.
Strickland said, “Every other city, every other state is giving incentives. If we totally stop giving incentives, we’d be the kid at the high school dance who nobody wanted to dance with because we didn’t have anything to offer.”
Some say companies take advantage of that.
International Paper was already getting tax incentives and threatened to leave, so the group in charge of tax incentives sweetened the deal.
“It’s a very complicated answer whether we are getting our money’s worth,” said Strickland.
It’s also complicated getting an answer from the group called EDGE.
The city/county economic development organization is in charge of giving out incentives and doesn’t answer to city council or county commission.
That’s starting to frustrate council members.
“It really bothers me to sit at this table and hear us talk about the commitments we’ve already made to multimillion dollar businesses when we’ve got a high poverty unemployment rate in this city,” said City Councilmember Wanda Halbert at a recent council meeting.
Strickland wants to look at freezing the taxes for fewer years and tracking the jobs these businesses claim to create.
I talked to an administrator with Edge and asked for an explanation about the Wright Medical deal, but no one ever called me back.
