Houston – Harris County has been selected by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA, through its Rethinking Revenue initiative), in partnership with the Sorenson Impact Center and Urban3, as one of six jurisdictions announced today that have been selected to participate in the inaugural Putting Assets to Work (PAW) Incubator.
Through PAW, local governments identify underutilized assets like dormant parking lots and draw on public and private expertise to make them revenue-generating while government retains ownership. Proceeds come back to the community in the form of benefits like mixed use developments that include affordable housing and new jobs. Harris County’s selection to be part of this Incubator will leverage over $1 million in services that would not otherwise be available to the County.
The Honorable Adrian Garcia, Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner stated, “My heart is filled with pride knowing that Harris County was chosen among the inaugural group of recipients for the “Putting Assets to Work” (PAW) incubator program. PAW will help us identify how we can convert property we already own into new development that serves the community well and provides public benefit. Instead of letting undervalued and underutilized spaces collect dust, we will turn them into innovative developments that make the county an even more attractive place to live, work, and play. I want to thank Director (Diana) Ramirez, the staff at the Department of Economic Equity and Opportunity, and the Government Finance Officers Association for their work to make this a reality.”
Harris County will embark on a 10-month fact-finding mission to identify, map, and plan uses for underutilized assets that could be suitable for private investment, with social and environmental benefits to the community. The PAW Incubator is made possible by a partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based think tank dedicated to improving quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land and thanks to support from Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that brings talented people together in networks to prove out their ideas and solve hard problems in science and society.
“We are absolutely delighted to start working with Harris County,” said McAdams, who served as Mayor of Salt Lake County from 2013 to 2019 before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. “When I was mayor, we identified all government-owned assets within the county and were shocked to discover they were valued at roughly $10 billion. That’s huge for a jurisdiction our size. If we are able to improve the public return on our assets even slightly, we can start to address some of the major challenges facing our region like increasing affordable workforce housing and investing in our transportation infrastructure, and we can do it without raising taxes. Now through our Putting Assets to Work incubator, we hope to be able to provide a blueprint for others to do the same.”
McAdams is a Senior Fellow at the Sorenson Impact Center, housed at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah.
The PAW Incubator counties and municipalities come from coast to coast, have leaders across the political spectrum, and have different priorities – but all see the promise in this innovation. Harris County joins the Incubator alongside the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Resilience Authority, in Annapolis, Maryland, and Anne Arundel County, Maryland; the City of Atlanta, Georgia; the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee; the City of Cleveland, Ohio; and the City of Lancaster, California.
“One of the most exciting things about this project is that we are going to be able to show in real-time where communities are leaking money and how, with the right investment, they will be able to reverse that,” said Joseph Minicozzi, the Principal of Urban3, an Asheville, North Carolina-based consulting company that specializes in land value economics, property tax analysis, and community design. “This is a data-driven project that will have a real impact on communities.”
“We are thrilled to continue reimagining how government can find the dollars in our modern economy for critical services while maintaining community values,” said Chris Morrill, Executive Director and CEO of GFOA, the Chicago-based membership organization for public finance officials. “Through our Rethinking Revenue initiative, PAW will enable civic leaders to do more with the assets that they have and find groundbreaking ways to meet their growing budgetary demands.”