Jerry Jones

What we talked about

Why he says you should never hand a reform politician a microphone

The line is his own, and it is about himself. Jerry Jones is a former city councilman in Louisiana, and his explanation is that elected officials tend not to read the cues telling them to stop talking. He delivers it as a joke on his own profession, which is roughly how he handles most of the conversation.

It is also the reason this interview exists. He used a version of it on a stage full of economic developers who were all pitching acreage and highway access, and it was the only pitch in the room anyone remembered.

Why the people are the only real differentiator

Jones is blunt that the physical inventory of a Texas suburb is not a differentiator. The spec buildings are the same, the concrete is the same, the home designs are the same, and as he puts it, if it is not St. Augustine grass then it is probably Bermuda. What is left is who lives there.

He describes Pflugerville as the most diverse community in Central Texas, and notes that it also carries a high median income and a highly educated population, a combination he says is not always assumed to go together. He cites a recent U.S. News ranking that placed the city fifteenth in the country and adds that he would like to see the five come off that number during his tenure. He is careful about where he puts the credit: not the council, not the city staff, not the PCDC staff, but the people who live there.

The other thing he is direct about is that he actually lives the pitch. His dentist is in Pflugerville. He gets his oil changed in Pflugerville. His view is that you cannot promote a community you do not spend money in.

What a community development corporation actually does

The clearest answer in the conversation is his definition of the job. PCDC, he says, is a liaison between government, business, and the community, three groups that do not always speak the same language or want the same thing out of a meeting. The work is sitting in the room with all three, identifying what each one actually needs, and then navigating the conversation to somewhere all three can go.

He also takes on the argument he sees on local social media, that new business is supposed to lower everyone’s taxes and never does. His answer is about square footage. Commercial properties occupy larger buildings with higher valuations, so they carry a larger share of the property tax burden. The more of them a city has, the less pressure there is to go to the public and ask for a rate increase. Cities struggling to attract business, he says, are the ones having that conversation with voters.

Why existing businesses matter more than whales

Jones is skeptical of the hunt for a single large relocation. Fortune 500 companies are not moving the way they once did, he says, so you are going to have to build your own shark or whale in your community. In practice that means business retention and expansion work with the companies already in town that are ready to grow, and entrepreneurs still working out of garages and off kitchen tables who need help getting to scale.

He follows it with the most practical thing he says all episode: the business you are recruiting does not want to hear from the economic development office. It wants to call the businesses already there and ask how the planning process went. You can neglect those relationships if you want to, but you will find out what they are worth the moment someone new starts asking questions.

Year one at PCDC

He started in February 2025, and his own summary is that they got out of the car while it was still rolling. In that first year, PCDC pursued and received re-accreditation as an Accredited Economic Development Organization through the International Economic Development Council, a designation he says only about 93 organizations in the country hold and which he calls the gold standard. He credits his predecessor with the original accreditation and notes that the reviewers told him applying in his first year was ambitious.

The same year, with a staff of four including himself, PCDC hosted a Consultant Connect site selector visit, the kind of event he says is usually organized at the county level or by an organization with far more tenure.