You want property tax relief?
•Applaud the passage of the biotechnology investment tax credit extension.
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•Help the University of Rhode Island raise the private funds it needs to supplement the $50 million supplied by the 2004 bond referendum for a new biotech and life sciences center.
•Give yourselves a hand for passing that bond, as well as another $14 million bond to build an Undersea Exploration Center at URI and rehabilitate the Pell Marine Science Library at the school’s Narragansett Bay Campus.
•Support another bond on the ballot in November, this one for $140 million to help URI build new pharmacology, nursing and chemistry buildings.
•Stop wasting your time on casinos.
We aren’t saying that the state should prohibit them. In fact, we do agree with the concept that the citizens should decide the issue through a ballot measure. But gambling is not an ideal structure on which to build a tax base.
Casinos generate tax revenue, but there is a great danger that they will draw people out of downtown Providence, and that is not a public good. Casinos also don’t create long-term high-paying jobs, and they don’t spin off more businesses and jobs.
Creating that kind of economy – which all of the initiatives outlined above will do – would create a solid foundation for higher tax yields into the foreseeable future.
You want property tax relief? Rhode Island needs to capitalize on its advantages, and right now those include biotechnology, cultural life, housing stock, educational institutions and the natural wonders implied by the name “Ocean State.” Spending so much time and energy on casinos, to mix metaphors, is rolling the dice and taking our eyes off the ball.
And another thing …
The winners of the 2006 Rhode Island Business Plan Competition were announced recently at a meeting of the Brown Forum for Enterprise.
PEK Wireless Systems (the student winner) and Axon Sleep Research Laboratories (the entrepreneur winner) each got $25,000 in cash and an estimated $32,500 in services.
That should really help smooth the road to success for these promising young companies.
The state needs to keep working to attract and keep creative and enterprising young people. Why? According to the R.I. Economic Policy Council, 62 percent of four-year college graduates from Rhode Island universities leave the state within five years of graduation, thus draining the economy of the talent needed to drive it forward in the coming decades. We can and must do better than that. Think a larger-scale Business Plan Competition – one in which we all win.
