Half million in tax money to Teradata?

While the taxpayers of Montgomery County are being told to expect less in the way of services, are facing price hikes in fees and are watching public infrastructure budgets be cut, we’re still be asked to contribute half a million dollars to Teradata so they can walk out of one lease, leave an empty building that’s less than 3 years old- and build yet another building:

Langos expects the lease deal to be complete by the end of the month. The relocating Teradata staffers in Oakwood work out of the Sugar Camp site off Schantz Avenue.

Miami Township has applied for a $500,000 Montgomery County Economic Development/Government Equity, or ED/GE, funding to help offset some of the project cost.

An advisory board recently recommended approval of the funding, scheduled to go before county commissioners for a final vote at their Dec. 10 meeting.

George Oberer Jr., chief executive officer of Oberer Cos., said once a lease is signed, the planning and approval process could take up to 90 days and then it would be another six to seven months to complete construction.

Under the proposal, Oberer would construct the new building adjacent to the existing facility.

According to the application from the township, the ED/GE funds are essential for the project to compete with vacant office space both inside and outside the region.

“This is very significant because it confirms the long-term presence of Teradata here in the township,” said Miami Township Administrator Greg Hanahan. “It’s my understanding the ED/GE grant was critical to be able to structure a deal that would allow for the expansion to occur here and not go somewhere else.”

The county had said $940,000 was available for this round of ED/GE grants, but it ended up having more than $1.8 million because of past projects that had not been completed. The county will start over with a new pot of $3 million for ED/GE funding in 2010.

via Teradata grows Miami Township headquarters – Dayton Business Journal:.

We’ve already established that the region is already seriously overbuilt with commercial space. I don’t have the ability to see how much we already contributed to the first move to Miami Township for the NCR spinoff right now- but wouldn’t be surprised if taxpayers were also on the hook for that move. Now they want money to move less than a mile to a new building by the Austin Road Interchange on property owned by local developer RG Properties.

A proposal to offer Teradata space in the old NCR HQ now owned by UD was shot down because “Teradata requires a standalone building for security.” I would question a company that is responsible for data security for massive databases- distributed globally- that can’t understand simple access control for secured areas? I can assure you that the Pentagon has secure areas and ultra-secure areas, and doesn’t require separate buildings.

Also, Teradata hasn’t exactly been struggling. To be able to walk out of a ten year lease says they have cash to burn. Not only that- but Teradata was able to pay it’s C-suite execs over $7 million in 2007, and in 2008 cleared over $200 million in profits. This company doesn’t need half a million of our tax dollars, in fact, serious damage was done to Dayton’s tax base when they moved from Dayton’s 2.25% income tax to Miami Townships 0% income tax rate.

The addition of the 40,000 sq ft of brand new, vacant office space in the building they are abandoning hurts all commercial property owners by depressing the values for their space. Look at the shuttering of the Key Bank building downtown, the foreclosure move on the former 5/3rd tower etc. Adding 60,000 more square feet to the inventory should not be supported by tax dollars.

It’s time to end this extortion by the rich (and yes- people paying themselves over a million a year are rich) of the poor- Montgomery County tax payers are currently running a 12% unemployment rate – and still have one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

And if Teradata threatens to leave- tell them to go ahead, their word on a lease means nothing anyway, and the likelihood of them finding someplace more cost effective to do business would happen one way or the other without our tax dollar contribution- which is more like rounding error to their balance sheet.

It’s time to end this corporate welfare NOW.

If you enjoyed reading true breaking news, instead of broken news from the major media in Dayton, make sure you subscribe to this site for an email every time I post. If you wish to support this blog and independent journalism in Dayton, consider donating. All of the effort that goes into writing posts and creating videos comes directly out of my pocket, so any amount helps! Please also subscribe to the Youtube channel for notifications of every video we launch – including the livestreams.