City of Hudson Oaks | Mayor Marc Povero
encourage development that can sustain our city,
and we have to attract it with responsible incentive
packages that don’t put the city in a negative
financial position.
Since we don’t have a property tax, we can’t
afford to bring in developments that don’t pay for
themselves. For every deal, we consider the longterm
sustainability of our city. Sometimes we lose
out when we aren’t willing to give away the farm,
but that’s OK.
We’d rather get the right kind of development,
based on what the market will bear, than
incentivize something to the hilt because it
wouldn’t otherwise succeed.
If we can’t afford to subsidize the wrong kind
of development, it would make sense that we also
work to avoid subsidization in our own operations.
We believe that the things we do should be
able to pay for themselves, and it manifests itself
in a number of ways. We do not ask our water
customers to subsidize our general fund. This is
a common practice across the state and is a way
to hide the cost of general operations by tacking a
portion onto a water bill. This also means that our
water rates are among the lowest in Parker County,
because we don’t ask our water customers to subsidize
our police department or street maintenance.
Conversely, we don’t ask our taxpayers to subsidize
our water system, which is less common, but
happens nevertheless throughout Parker County.
Our permit fees are higher than other cities
because we ask our developers to pay for the full cost
of the development process rather than having our
existing property owners subsidize new development.
We look for creative ways attract the right kind
of development. You can see this in the urbanized
development style that we have been moving toward
over the past two years. By encouraging a walkable,
mixed-use style on Oakey Trail, in the Creekside
apartments, and with our new hotel development,
we are able to develop sustainably.
These types of developments encourage multimodal
forms of transportation; they encourage
community-building; they maximize the limited
34 EAST PARKER COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE | RELOCATION & BUSINESS GUIDE 2020 - 2021