So my friends in Sound Off are at it again. This time, its “If you want a man who lobbied for the spaceport tax, you should vote for Bill McCamley. If you want a guy whos got the peoples trust, vote for Neal Hooks.” I did lobby for the tax to build Spaceport America, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Why? Jobs and Education... and we need these to things to make our community a better place. Fact 1- Virgin Galactic now has 16 full time employees in their Las Cruces office. If they average $50k per year (which is probably low), this means there is $800k directly added to our local economy every year. This will only get bigger. Fact 2- Virgin has paid rent on the building to the tune of $2.6 million already. That money is used to fund the NM Spaceport Authority, which has their offices in Las Cruces. Fact 3- Virgin has paid New Mexico companies over $3.6 million for supplies, and has signed contracts to NM Companies for over $3 million. These include Hotel Encanto in Las Cruces, and Savoy Catering services in Mesilla. Fact 4- All this has happened without Virgin actually launching anything yet, but this is finally looking like a reality. They are scheduled to get their license from the FAA by the end of the year and have not backed away from their March target yet for commercial flights. I personally know people that have gotten a job with Virgin, moved out to their Mojave test facility to get trained, and will move back here to operate out of Spaceport America. Fact 5- None of this economic benefit takes in to account other companies that have worked out of the Spaceport, including Lockheed and UP Aerospace (which is the company that launched Scotty from Star Trek’s ashes in to space). Fact 5- Every time there is a conference or event, we get the financial benefit. At the recent ISPCS Conference held in Las Cruces there were hundreds of attendees that came in from around the world. When they stay in hotels and eat at our restaurants we benefit. Fact 6- 1/4 of the Spaceport Tax goes to schools for science education. In the seven years that Las Cruces Public Schools’ has received these funds, they have doubled student participation in upper level Science and Math classes. These kids will then be in a great position to get the jobs that are being created here locally. Spaceport America is real. It is working. And it will only get better. Our biggest export is our talent. We spend tax money funding education for our kids, but if we don’t also invest in job opportunities for them the only thing we are doing is training the workforce for Dallas, Denver, and Phoenix. And that is unacceptable.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:02:33 +0000
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