Parks and Economic Development

The Economic Development Transparency page is provided to increase transparency in the area of economic development and to inform taxpayers about programs and incentives supported by their tax dollars that are designed to attract industry and investment, create jobs and otherwise grow the economy. The City of League City strives to be an open government in all areas and is working to further develop information published for public viewing in the areas of finance, contract and procurement, economic development, public pensions, and debt obligations. For more information on the City’s designated Transparency pages, please visit our Transparency page.

For more information on the Texas Comptroller’s efforts to encourage transparency in local government, please visit their web page.

Parks

The City of League City, Texas is committed to improving the community’s quality of life through the development of amateur sports facilities and commercial projects. To accomplish these goals, League City uses Chapters 501-505 of the Texas Local Government Code in support of a Type 4B Board to fund the development of amateur sports facilities and Chapter 380 of the Texas Local Government Code in support of commercial projects.

Although it is formally called the “Section 4B Industrial Development Board”, League City’s Type 4B Board is authorized to use a ¼% of local sales tax for the “development of amateur sports facilities”. Due to the specific ballot language in which this 4B tax was passed by League City voters, the City of League City has not entered into any economic development agreements that involve the use of 4B sales tax revenue. In accordance with the City’s efforts to promote transparency, all Section 4B Industrial Development Board expenses for the past 5 years have been provided on a transparency web page dedicated to the Section 4B Industrial Development Board.

Economic Development

In order to support and facilitate the development of quality commercial projects, which are in keeping with the community’s goals and objectives, the City of League City uses General Fund Revenues through Chapter 380 of the Texas Local Government Code. These public funds are invested in the support of economic development projects that will generate a return in the form of new commercial tax revenue and/or new (or retained), quality, high-paying primary jobs. In the past six years, the City has not entered into any “tax abatement” agreements. As opposed to “tax abatement” per se, we have made investments in qualifying projects in the form of tax reimbursements, fee reimbursements, fee waivers, and cash grants. If and/or when we choose to use formal “tax abatement” as an investment tool for economic development, we will include it in our list of “investments” and include all uses of “tax abatement” in all our materials for economic development financial transparency.

New Financial Transparency Tools

In order to gauge the progress of increasing financial transparency in economic development, we embarked upon a process to retool and revise the Economic Development Strategic Plan, propose a significantly different methodology by which all proposed economic development projects will be evaluated for “investment”, studied best practices of municipalities which have already received the Texas Comptroller’s Transparency Star for Economic Development, created new financial transparency tools that are specific to the community, and established new benchmarks against which all future economic development activity and financial transparency will be evaluated.

In particular reference to new, financial transparency tools and benchmarks for economic development that are specific to League City, the City:

• Identifiedallforms of commercial tax revenue and fees, either forgone, abated, or reimbursed, that were contributed to a project as “investments”,
• Converted all commercial taxable values to dollars of revenue to create a very transparent and easy-to-understand framework by which to compare the amount of commercial tax revenue and fees collected versus “invested”,
• Showed all “investments” in terms of the total amount of commercial taxes and fees collected and the amount of commercial taxes and fees “invested” for economic development projects,
• Identified all commercial tax revenue and fees collected,
• Identified all commercial tax revenue and fees “invested”,
• Showed a comparison between the commercial tax revenue and fees collected and “invested”,
• Showed the amount of commercial tax revenue and fees collected and “invested” per capita, and
• Showed a comparison between the commercial tax revenue and fees collected and “invested” per capita.

Fiscal Year 2016 to 2017 is the first year for which we have pursued the Texas Comptroller’s Transparency Star for Economic Development. The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the City of League City, for the year ended September 30, 2017 included the disclosures as required by Government Accounting Standards Board, Statement 77. This disclosure can be found on page 69 of the document (PDF). The tools which we have created this year will be used as the benchmarks and baseline measures against which we will track our future efforts to improve financial transparency for economic development.

Visit the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Economic Development Corporation Report search tool.

Economic Development Statistics

The City of League City (City) is committed to improving the community’s quality of life through the development of high quality commercial projects in all areas of the City as authorized by Chapter 380 of the Texas Local Government Code. As opposed to “tax abatement” per se, the City has invested public funds in qualifying projects by making “investments” in the form of tax reimbursements, fee reimbursements, fee waivers, and cash grants.

The following chart shows all commercial revenue collected by the City of League City from Sales and Use Taxes, Commercial Property Taxes, and Commercial Fees.