Most people with any interest in the topic are aware that to lure a new business to a municipality, officials often need to offer incentives such as tax breaks. It’s a reality across the country. And it turns out these days that tax incentives aren’t enough: companies are also looking for shovel-ready sites that are already equipped with municipal water, sewer services and other amenities.

Marc Baez, the president and CEO of the Sullivan County Partnership for Economic Development (PED), has asked the county legislature to invest $100,000—along with $60,000 from three other municipalities—for a study of a corridor along Route 17, mostly in the Town of Liberty, that if it comes to pass would feature a number of shovel-ready sites meant to be attractive to light manufacturing operations.

That sparked a predictable reaction from some quarters. Resident Ken Walters, who has often expressed frustration with the Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency (IDA), whose mission is to bestow tax breaks on companies, pointed out that the agency is expecting a revenue surplus of $1.6 million a year for the next three years because of the coming casino. He said that the IDA works hand in hand with the PED, and the IDA should pay for the study. Perhaps he has a point.

Legislator Mark McCarthy said he had reservations about governments investing in such projects. He said that while he has seen some successes, he has also seen “tremendous failures.” Perhaps, he too, has a point. The IDA spent nearly $1 million in money from various sources, some of it from the IDA itself, to build a boutique slaughterhouse that, as it turned out, no one was interested in operating.

Still, luring new businesses with the promise of tax breaks and shovel-ready sites is the way things are done these days, and businesses expect to take advantage of them. During his presentation to the legislature, Baez pointed to the Metalized Carbon Corporation, which recently acquired a shovel-ready site in the Glen Wild Industrial Park, as a success story of local economic development.

According to the IDA website, the company, which produces parts for General Electric aircraft engines, will create 10 jobs for the area, with some coming from outside the county and moving to Sullivan County. The pay will average $40,000 per employee.

The cost/benefit analysis of the project says that the tax breaks to the company over the next 20 years will be some $855,379. But the benefits above and beyond the cost will be some $3.25 million. The market value of the acreage the company purchased in the park is listed at $86,600, so even when the cost of the improvements are figured into the equation, it seems like an overall plus for the county and the Town of Fallsburg.

Baez’s mantra for quite a few years now has been that the county needs more shovel-ready sites, and the only way to create them—at least in the initial stages—is with public money. He further said that he is aware of the types of businesses the community would welcome, and therefore he would not seek to lure a tire-shredding operation to a site. But, he added, with shovel ready-sites, the county would be able to easily attract companies like the one moving into Glen Wild.

Legislator Alan Sorensen remarked that an industrial corridor could be created while still maintaining the rural character of the area, and Baez said that would be addressed in the study.

Certainly the proposed location, which runs along the limited-access highway in the Town of Liberty, seems a good fit. There are already some businesses in the corridor, and the town could surely use the increased revenues. Just last year, the town lost $7 million dollars worth of assessed value because of property being taken off the tax rolls and other reasons, and the creation of shovel-ready sites would seem to be one way to offset the loss.

The Montreign Casino will be opening in the Town of Thompson in 2018, and Baez believes the county should use the momentum of that development to diversify its economic base. If that can be done without sacrificing the local environment and without negatively impacting homeowners already living in the area, then the county legislature should give serious consideration to the PED proposal. And the possibility that the IDA, rather than Sullivan taxpayers, could at least help pay for it, should certainly be explored.