DUNCAN – The Duncan Economic Development Trust Authority recently approved the Duncan Area Economic Development Foundation’s request to withdraw $22,653.71 in sales tax dollars, which will be used for an incentive payment to the bus and transportation services dealer Model 1 Commercial Vehicles.
The authority, which is made up of the five Duncan City Council members, voted unanimously April 23 to grant the foundation’s request.
The request represented the foundation’s third payment to Model 1 for its incentive, DAEDF President Lyle Roggow said in an April 11 letter to Interim City Manager Kenzie Wheeler. He added that the incentive is based on the number of new hires at the company starting Aug. 1, 2023, paying for new jobs through July 2026.
“For the f irst calendar quarter of 2024, Model 1 had a to tal of 29 full-time employees, with 23 of those employees qualifying for the incentive,” Roggow said.
He added that the incentive equals 10% of annual new salaries at the distribution center, paid quarterly.
The authority approved DAEDF’s contract with Model 1 in the summer of 2023, Roggow said in an email to a Southwest Ledger reporter. The agreement requires Model 1 to create 50 jobs paying $40,000 or more, with an incentive cap of $4,000 per job.
“With the incentive offering being a performance-based agreement, a quarterly report is submitted to DAEDF for verification which allows the approval of drawing down the job incentive dollars from DEDTA,” Roggow said. “Currently, Model 1 has ov er 30 full-time jobs and is expected to have significant growth as they begin building their new facility.”
When Model 1 announced in 2023 that it was opening a distribution center in Duncan, the company said it would move into a 10,000-square-foot building that DAEDF built to attract new businesses, The Duncan Banner reported in its July 19, 2023, edition. The newspaper reported that setting up shop in the DAEDF building would give the company time to develop construction plans for a 40,000-square-foot facility in Eastland Industrial Park, which should be up and running by 2026.