Rich DePalma
City Council, District 8
I will support the adopted revised economic incentive policy designed to improve job opportunities for lower-wage and middle-skilled workers. If a company meets the criteria set by policy, I will vote in support. Prior to moving back to Texas, I served on a local Workforce Investment Board and also served as Vice President of Economic Development for the local chamber. I am familiar with the reporting required for incentive recipients to demonstrate meeting their agreements. The monitoring of the agreements should be done in committee on a semi-annual or annual basis. The city does have some issues in monitoring agreements and performance, we need the Austin Open Data to be the one stop location for all performance metrics and reporting. Data is still kept in too many places and too often it is difficult to determine how old the information. It is time to make this simpler.