To lure financial giant Deutsche Bank and its promised 319 jobs to Cary, town leaders agreed earlier this month to cough up a $75,000 cash incentive on top of $9.4 million offered up by the state.

The deal marked the fifth time in the last three years alone that Cary leaders have doled out similar or in some cases higher dollar amounts to land new industry.

While one Town Council member is sore over the incentive, others say they'll keep close tabs on whether Deutsche fulfills its promise. "One of the ways the Town Council typically looks at these deals is based on what kind of return they'll see on their investment," said Scott Fogleman, the town's budget director. "They want to know how long it's going to be before the town sees a return on its investment through the tax base."

Cary leaders have set a deadline of Dec. 31, 2013, for Deutsche Bank to produce the designated number of jobs, which will pay an average salary of $88,213. The company also must have in place at least $6.7 million in capital assets by the 2013 deadline, Fogleman said. If the company fails to meet those goals, it would be required to repay Cary 10 percent of the town's investment for up to five years or until the company meets the stipulations, whichever comes first.

Similar deals have been struck between Cary and companies who have set up shop here for at least a decade, said Town Manager Ben Shivar.

The Town Council approved a $25,000 cash incentive in July to draw Loparex, a manufacturer of silicone-coated papers and films, from Willowbrook, Ill., to the Crescent Lakeside development on Crescent Green. And in February 2008, the town shelled out $500,000 in incentives to Siemens for an expansion of that company's medical campus in Regency Park.

With each of these incentives deals -- and many before them -- Councilman Don Frantz has become somewhat of a renegade vote. Frantz said he is not ideologically opposed to incentives; in theory, he supports the idea of rewarding those who would, say, reinvest in Cary's downtown and older parts of town where Cary encourages infill development.

"It's about how they're given or to whom they're given," Frantz said. "I just feel like we need to take care of our own first. To use incentives just to convince a trillion-dollar company to set up shop in Cary, I'm not OK with that."

Mayor Harold Weinbrecht, who voted to approve the Deutsche deal, said it's not about handing out freebies to major corporations. "It's not a giveaway, it's an investment," he said. "... What I look for is whether it brings high-paying jobs and how quickly we can get our money back."