Russ Steele
At one time the Nevada County Economic Resource Council had a vision that we could create a cluster of solar energy business in the County and helping company called DayStar Technologies move to here from Colorado. DayStar was developing some interesting leading edge technology called CIGS, thin film copper-indium-gallium-di-selenide solar cells for the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity. Layers of the semiconductor are deposited along with other layers of material that enable the solar generated electricity to be carried out of the cell to the circuit connected to a battery or more directly to the utility electrical grid.
The ERC was helping this new Nevada County company find some additional financing, when in June 2004 DayStar Technologies announced that "it has elected to relocate the Company from Grass Valley, California to Saratoga County, New York where it will establish its corporate headquarters, manufacturing plant and research and development facilities. To assist DayStar in its relocation efforts, the New York State Department of Economic Development has provided a package of State and local economic incentives valued up to $11,136,000."
In December of 2007 DayStar Technologies moved its Corporate Headquarters and research facility back to California, following a struggle to keep the company viable, and is now located at 2972 Stender Way, Santa Clara, CA 95054. It makes me wonder that once New York's incentive money was gone, and the pool of grants dried up, DayStar moved back to California.
Now this from the Sac Bee yesterday, a major competitor of DayStar, OptiSolar is moving to Sacramento:
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors has approved an economic incentive agreement with OptiSolar to bring a large photo-voltaic manufacturing plant to McClellan Park.
The incentive agreement will provide up to $20 million over 25 years for OptiSolar to locate its 600,000-square-foot solar panel manufacturing plant at the former air force base in North Highlands.
About 500 jobs will be created in the next three years because of the plant. The county will also benefit from taxes derived from the plant.
It seem to me this is very steep price for economic development, a $20 million incentive for 500 jobs.
That $40K for each job. "So, how may jobs does Nevada County want at $40K each," asks a regular reader of this blog?
History has proven that using economic incentives to attract jobs in not a good bargain, once the incentive money run out the company moves on to the next location which is offering incentives. We should not be buying jobs for Nevada County with incentives.
