The short version
Eight school-tax agreements, executed: four phases of Terafab in each of two Grimes County school districts, maintenance-and-operations relief that sums to $1,660,400,000 through 2046 - Iola ISD $644.1M, Anderson-Shiro CISD $1,016.3M, per the Comptroller’s own recommendation table.
The filings’ own jobs number: 617 direct permanent jobs at Anderson-Shiro and 383 at Iola. 1,000 total - repeated unchanged on every phase application, which either means 1,000 across all phases or 1,000 per phase; the filings do not say.
The division nobody has run: $1.66M per direct permanent job on the filed numbers. On the announced 3,000 jobs, $553K. Every reading of the denominator lands above half a million dollars of school-district tax relief per job.
The pressure that produced the number: SpaceX told school districts the project “could leave Texas entirely”without the breaks, and told the board meetings it “would likely have moved to a different site in a different state” - while the separate county agreement’s $5 billion minimum carries an unsigned SpaceX line and a walk-away-anytime clause.
The receipts are public and linked below: the eight applications, the phase ladder as filed ($45.7B Iola + $73.5B Anderson - the $119B ceiling, digit for digit), and the recommendation letters.
The fork: which denominator
The filed side. Each district’s applications carry one employment figure - 617 and 383 - and repeat it on every phase application without stating whether it is cumulative or per-phase. If cumulative, Terafab is 1,000 direct permanent jobs. If per-phase, 4,000. The honest read is the ambiguity itself: the same filing that prices the abatement to the dollar does not pin the number the abatement is priced against. Even at the generous 4,000 reading, the relief is $415K per job.
The town side. The ~1,500 figure in local circulation has a traceable origin - KBTX’s own arithmetic: “The community of Iola has a population of just over 300, with the Terafab project bringing in roughly 5 times that number in new jobs.” Five times a 300-person town. The chamber briefing carried the same figure with entry wages above $70,000. (An 1,800 figure also circulated; this desk could not source it and drops it.)
The announcement side. The $16.8 billion first phase was announced with 3,000 jobs attached. That is the number most coverage carries; it is three times the filings’ cumulative figure.
The napkin
The per-job division, on the executed benefits:
Every reading above $415,000 per job. The district-side mechanics, as filed and reported: Iola’s Phase-1 benefit is $82,255,197, secured by a performance bond of $8,225,520 - exactly 10 percent; the recommendation is rescinded if the application changes. SpaceX will pay 92 percent of Iola ISD’s bond debt, per the board president. That is the finding: not a scandal, a price - stated in filings nobody divided.
Why it matters
What the districts sold: the largest investment in Texas history, per the coverage of the eight applications - a $119.2B four-phase build against $1.66B of school relief, roughly 1.4 percent. The boards judged it worth making, 5-2, twice, the same night. A town of 300 absorbing five times its population in jobs is its own arithmetic.
The first receipts cut both ways. Iola’s taxpayers: a debt-service rate that shrinks every year as Terafab’s taxable value grows, instead of the 30-cent jump the district braced for. Anderson-Shiro’s: taxes rising about 12 cents this year on 2024 bond payments - a benefiting district whose bills still went up while the paperwork sat unsigned at the county. The allocator’s read: the unit price of onshoring a fab in 2026, paid in school-district relief - now a filed, checkable number rather than a debate.
The receipts behind this piece sit on the desk’s public reference page: data.somen.ai/companies/terafab.
The falsifier
The 2029 hiring test resolves the denominator. Iola’s filing schedules all 383 jobs for 2029, its first operations year; Anderson-Shiro’s first phase reaches the tax rolls in 2029-30. If 4,000 direct jobs materialize, the relief was $415K each and the filings’ ambiguity was modesty. If 1,000 do, it was $1.66M each. Construction itself carries a nearer test: SpaceX told the boards it wants Phase 1 underway before the end of 2026. Tracked on the public scorecard, resolve by Dec 31, 2029.
The state priced the security to the dollar and never pinned the denominator. The 2029 payrolls will.
Sources
KBTX - the eight-application recommendation table - the M&O benefits per phase ($1,660.4M combined), the Craven signature, the zone process, the $120K in fees (token-verified on-page)
Texas Comptroller open data - J0035, the Anderson-Shiro Phase-1 application - 617 employment, the placement schedule, the $55-119B range
Texas Comptroller open data - J0039, the Iola recommendation - 383 employment, the $82,255,197 benefit, the $8,225,520 performance bond, the rescission clause, the Parent Company field (full-text extracted)
KBTX - the Iola 5-2 vote - the votes, the 5x-a-300-person-town line, the move-to-another-state statement, the end-2026 construction aim
KBTX - the two-district budget contrast - Iola’s shrinking debt-service rate vs Anderson-Shiro’s 12-cent rise
The Texan - the 92 percent bond-debt statement - Pointer at the public hearing (text via the search index; page bot-walled)
KBTX - the records beat - the $5B unsigned minimum, the walk-away clause, the incomplete-first applications
SpaceX updates - the announcement / Newsweek - the 3,000-jobs framing
KBTX - the chamber briefing - the ~1,500 figure with entry wages above $70,000
Numbers derived from the SOMEN graph at publication.
- The SOMEN Desk