Newton staff present consolidated economic development policy draft; commission asks for clearer ROI, abatement matrix and fee rules

City staff presented a consolidated draft economic development policy at a work session focused on standardizing how Newton evaluates and administers tax abatements, fee waivers and other incentives.

Rebecca, a city staff member leading the presentation, told the commission staff had pulled existing, older policies into a single, modern draft to make the processes easier to find and apply. She said the draft currently uses a break-even return-on-investment (ROI) of 1.0 but that the International Economic Development Council’s common practice is 1.3. “One recommendation would [be] to bring up that ROI when we get those calculations back to a 1.3 to bring us closer to that standard,” Rebecca said.

Commissioners and staff pressed for clarity on how ROI would be calculated and who would perform the analysis. Staff said the city has used a contracted firm and an accompanying data sheet (used with CDR/CBR) and recommended continuing with that contractor while sharing the data sheet in the policy for transparency. Staff noted an EDC…