Mayor Craig Morgan pens a monthly column for the Round Rock Leader. This is a repost of his most recent feature.
MAYOR CRAIG MORGAN
Round Rock has a long, storied history of welcoming economic development, and its most well known success story is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
Leading up to the 1990s, Round Rock was in serious danger of becoming a bedroom community, which is defined as a “small community that has no major industries and that is lived in by people who go to another town or city to work.” Many people were choosing to live in Round Rock for its affordability and schools, and driving down Interstate 35 to work in Austin.
Although small town comforts tend to be associated with bedroom communities, the truth is suburbs without their own commercial development tend to fall victim to traffic, lack of amenities and higher tax rates as they continue to grow. Our city’s leaders saw the benefit of choosing another future for our community.
Following a surge in commercial and industrial activity in the mid-’90s, Round Rock’s leadership successfully recruited a little company you may have heard of from Austin in 1994. Dell Technologies’ relocation to Round Rock was the beginning of our city as we know it today, spawning homes and businesses catering to thousands of local Dell employees.
It’s easy to see Dell’s direct economic impact in the form of jobs and contribution to our community’s financial well being after all these years. Dell is the city’s largest sales tax generator, contributing to our public safety, transportation network, parks, library and more.
As recently as 2007, sales tax collections from Dell made up 38 percent of the city’s total sales tax revenues. Just this past year, the City Council created a budgetary policy to limit Dell sales tax collections to just 20 percent of our budgeted general fund sales tax revenues, while depositing any remainder in our general self finance construction fund for one-time capital expenditures to benefit our community.
Dell has an impact far beyond Round Rock city limits. For each of the approximately 16,000 employees working for the company in Texas, another 3.5 jobs are supported across the state. The company spends $3 billion with Texas-based suppliers, supporting more than 71,500 jobs.
In addition to the direct economic benefit to Round Rock and Texas, Dell is well known for its social responsibility in the Central Texas region.
Technology programs led by Dell have helped educate approximately 2,194 underserved youth at the Boys & Girls Club of the Austin Area, and more than $13.4 million and 200,000 hours of volunteer time have been donated across the state supporting initiatives like environmental protection, youth education and disaster relief.
We have confidence to say our community has also been a good choice for Dell. The company’s headquarters-related business in Round Rock has earnings of $9.9 billion, making up 29 percent of Dell’s overall U.S. revenues.
Economic development wins are an important part of Round Rock’s success story, and we are excited to see how these projects continue to benefit our community. Our successful partnership with Dell paved the way for future agreements with Round Rock Premium Outlets, IKEA, Emerson Process Management, Bass Pro Shops, Kalahari Resorts and Conventions and more.
Twenty-five years later, Dell remains a major driver to our economy. As the company continues to make its mark on the state of Texas and beyond, Round Rock is proud to be the home of this stellar organization.
Craig Morgan was elected mayor of Round Rock in May 2017. He has served on the City Council since May 2011.
