Posted on 07/31/2006 11:34:01 AM PDT by ritewingwarrior
STAFFORD, Texas — They are not the words one expects to hear from a politician or a Southerner, and Leonard Scarcella is both: "Our city has an excessive number of churches."
Scarcella is mayor of this Houston-area community, which has 51 churches and other religious institutions packed into its 7 square miles.
With some 300 undeveloped, potentially revenue-producing acres left in Stafford, officials are scrambling to find a legal way to keep more tax-exempt churches from building here.
"With federal laws, you can't just say, 'We're not going to have any more churches,' " Scarcella said. "We respect the Constitution, but 51 of anything is too much."
Stafford, population 19,227, is the largest city in Texas without a property tax, and it depends on sales taxes and business fees for revenue. Nonprofits have been attracted by its rapid growth and minimal deed restrictions. "It's thrown everything out of balance, plus providing zero revenue. Somebody's got to pay for police, fire and schools," City Councilman Cecil Willis said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Scarcella is a grandstanding first-class jerk. On every issue affecting his city he comes out with theatrical claims about how it is going to be the end of the world.
However, unlike Stafford, we definitely have a property tax.
"We respect the Constitution, but 51 of anything is too much."
Where is the money coming from to build all these churches? Whoever is funding them obviously doesn't feel that way.
I knew there were no personal property taxes, state income taxes and taxes on food items in Texas but it seems like most property tax rates are on average pretty high. Stafford sounds like an anomaly that probably won't stay that way for long.
I guess the town is also willing to give up the revenue from 51 churches' worth of IHOP receipts, from all those people grabbing a bite to each after service.
I'm 99% certain that Stafford is part of Tom DeLay's district. It certainly isn't poor, with a mix of some older middle class neighborhoods, some new middle class subdivisions, and a majority of its land is industrial, retail, or office. So a much lower number of tax users vs. potential tax generators as compared to most Texas towns. Most cities and towns would kill to have their ratio of commercial development.
The old town center (though not historic) is strung out between 2 parallel roads that were converted to one-way operations and operate as Hwy 90. It is a major route connecting DeLay's suburbs to the booming medical center, so TXDOT wanted to upgrade the highway to remove all traffic lights and replace them with grade-separations. The intersections at the center of Stafford is a huge bottleneck at rush hour and weekends, with a very busy railroad track next to the highway that cloggs things up further. The mayor (Scarcella) held up agreements to upgrade this stretch for awhile with all kinds of grandstanding and hyperbole. The offer to grade-separate both the intersection and the railroad all the way through town wasn't enough, he was insisting that the railroad also be rerouted many miles outside the town (at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.) Of course that wasn't going to happen but he succeeded in delaying a much needed project, and in the end got nothing out of it but ink.
Indeed. DeLay's office is in Stafford.
HC perhaps can speak to this better than I can, having been an adult and presumably paying attention during the years in question, two advantages I lack.
I grew up in Missouri City, which adjoins Stafford. Those two and Sugar Land are a large chunk of suburban southwest Houston known as Fort Bend.
Missouri City is a bedroom community, and Sugar Land at the time was as well, except it also had the Imperial sugar factory (which closed in the late '90s, I think). Stafford was where all the industry was.
When Stafford broke out of the Fort Bend Independent School District in the mid-'80s and formed its own district, there was much consternation in Fort Bend since most of the taxpaying businesses were in Stafford, and the new district would be overfunded by all those tax dollars, while Fort Bend would go wanting.
Given this, and the state of Stafford High last time I drove by, I'm guessing the worries were for naught.
I will further note that in college, I worked at a full-service car wash several doors down from the Evangelical Formosan Church, and it was a lot closer geographically to the no-tell motel than to the muffler shop. The guys who worked with me weren't that sure it was an actual church.
Also, I would like the record to show that I have no freakin' clue what Jesus House Texas is.
If it sounds familiar to you, you must have been there.
There is absolutely nothing of note in Stafford, Texas.
Except Jesus House Texas, perhaps.
The large majority of Stafford residents are Hispanic and attend one of its two Catholic churches (which have both been there for many a year and are not the sort of church discussed in the article). Both have sizable congregations.
This Scarcella guy sounds like a world-class goon. And here I thought that Keith Woods character from Brookshire was the worst local politician ever!
> This town and it's citizens need to think out of the box to tap into this market.
Indeed: tax the churches, just like any other business.
51 CHURCHES in a 7 mile area...I'd say that was excessive...
Even before you wrote this, I suspected that the word "churches" was a codeword for "non-northwestern European-Americans" or some other perceived social defect, such as "Catholic" or "poor."
"If it sounds familiar to you, you must have been there.
There is absolutely nothing of note in Stafford, Texas.
"
Actually, I just figured out why the name was familiar. It's the location of American Caging, Inc., the money-handling company that's been linked to the Simcox/Keyes organizations, along with other non-profits.
I don't suppose that means anything, but I just couldn't figure out why I recognized the name of some obscure Houston 'burb. It was driving me nuts.
This is very interesting to me because I was just reading a thread earlier that mentioned Stafford in relation to the Minutemen association.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.