I am receipt of your excellent write up, dated June 6, 2002 on Palladium, but I strongly disagree with your philosophy on TIF's.  

Dallas MUST stop giving these enormous incentives to billionaires who want to throw their weight around and whine like little babies.  These are Mega Corporations and can well afford any start up costs.  

I work for a multibillion dollar oil and gas corporation.  We have huge costs associated with drilling our wells, especially offshore and foreign.  We pay ALL costs associated with our drilling activity.  We do this knowing there is profit in this venture.  

Let's face it, each corporation is here to make a buck.  Palladium obviously wanted to build in Dallas so they could tout Dallas as their official address. 

In these hard economic times, Dallas cannot afford to give up any revenue or potential revenue through abatements.  Your philosophy would be like granting me property tax relief because I spend my hard earned money in Dallas when I could spend my money elsewhere.  

Threats such as Palladium demonstrated are insulting to us citizens of Dallas.  I hardly think $43 million was a deal killer.  They called your poker hand and won with two of a kind when you had a royal flush.  

Dallas is noted internationally and they know that Dallas is the most logical place for them to locate.  Arlington, Bedford, Euless, Carrollton have little national, much less international recognition.

If I read your letter correctly, we taxpayers just lost $2,570,000 per year.  That will mean it will take 16 years to recover this funding.  This is unacceptable.  This is just one entity that is not paying their share of property tax, yet you all want to increase our valuations and tax rates on our homes.  The middle class can no longer support both the rich and poor.  The rich can no longer ask for handouts. 

I realize projects like this bring jobs and sales tax revenue to the city, but you MUST remember, these corporations are only focused on their BOTTOM line.  They could care less about jobs and revenue for the city. 

While I respect your opinion and decision, I do not agree with it.  

You all at City Hall are elected officials who must fulfill the desires of the people you represent.  These corporate giants did not elect you into office, we middle class people did.  We are not ignorant people and understand there may need to be some form of incentive to attract business, but I think our city name should be the major incentive to attract corporation, not dollar handouts.

Thanks,

Michael Perry
Dallas, Texas 75220