National Financial Crisis and Impact on Mont Belvieu

Those of you who read this and are not from the area (and even some of you who are in the area) may be wondering about the financial health of the City. While I am certainly not the financial guy around here (that's John Iles, and he does a fine job of it) I have come to understand some of the workings of the City and its finances. I find it very interesting, especially in light of some of the recent news out of Wall Street.

Let me assure any of you who may be concerned - our City is doing just fine. Without getting specific, our City has taken appropriate steps to provide continued services long term while still achieving goals. Mr. Easum and Mr. Iles are very conservative in their efforts to ensure that this stays the case.

One of the benefits of being tied to the petro-chemical industry as we are is that we are able to weather periodic turns in the economy differently than the rest of the world. Our unique geologic and geographic position allows us a certain amount of comfort: because we are located where we are the value of the property near us will not change drastically. You can't move underground storage tanks. So short-term, we should be OK.

Long-term, though, we need to start thinking about diversifying our economic base. When such a large percentage of our economy comes from one industry, it is always a little precarious. What if no one bought natural gas anymore? What if it all dried up? What if a hurricane or tornado damaged it beyond repair? God forbid any of these things happen. But contingencies ought to be in place. And diversification of our economy is something we should consider.

Part of attracting people to an area is the diversity of economic opportunity that exists. We are in a position to do great things with our City that will help foster the right economic environment to pull in that opportunity. Education, job training, and other general facilities and infrastructure improvements are all things that companies will look for in locating their business here. We actually have a relatively low tax rate compared with other cities around Texas. That helps. We have a wide variety of workers and good infrastructure in place as well. That all helps, also. The one area we seem to be lacking in is the education level and opportunities. People who are better educated not only earn more money, but they are better able to weather the periodic convulsions that shake our economy in general.

More on this later.