FBN Coverage of Tunstalls Visit to MC City Council Monday

The Politics Of Tax Breaks And Land Development
Fort Bend Politics

By Bob Dunn

When Kevin Tunstall approached the microphone at Monday night’s Missouri City Council meeting, the District C council candidate hadn’t completed two full sentences before Mayor Allen Owen stopped him.

“Let me caution you,” the mayor said, “I will not allow a political speech” during a council session. It was as if everything that happens before a city council or county commission doesn’t carry political overtones, especially less than a month away from an election.

The subject of Tunstall’s comments, for instance.

He was there to talk about this arcane economic development tool called a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. And it turns out that the theory and practice of creating such TIRZs is fraught with political implications, since TIRZs go hand-in-hand with land developers. And in Fort Bend County, as everywhere else, it seems land developers go hand-in-hand with politicians.

Tunstall said he’d been prompted to study up on the concept of a TIRZ, after two other Missouri City residents – one a past political candidate and the other a current council candidate – had approached council at consecutive recent meetings to suggest a TIRZ should be used to attract business and development along Texas Parkway and Cartwright Road. Council members suggested the two citizens were short on facts about TIRZs and how they operate. . .

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