We’re always looking for good news in the business world, particularly when it involves new businesses that will be hiring local people. Lately we’ve had some good news on that front. In Statesville, we’ve had several recent announcements of new or expanding manufacturing plants that will hire local workers- Providencia, makers of non-woven fabric, Piedmont Rubber Recycling who process old tires into rubber mulch, and Talon Systems, a furniture manufacturer. A recent check on the Larkin mixed use community found that the developer, GS Carolina, is still planning on moving ahead with the project next spring if negotiations with the city of Statesville on bond funding options continue in a positive fashion.
In Mooresville, we recently got the word that the Langtree at the Lake mixed use developement will receive government backed bond funding for infrastructure work that will enable them to make progress on their construction schedule. On the other hand, it appears that efforts to bring a hydrogen powered bus manufacturer to the Mooresville have lost out to other competing cities including Greenville, SC. The shame of that loss is that capturing this manufacturer might have been the start of a whole new industry here. We may still be able to attract they hydrogen fuel business here since there has been a lot done here on that already, but the bus manufacturer would have meant up to 1,300 jobs!
It seems that most decisions made by large company owners regarding if and where they will bring their companies to a particular location are dependent on governments, local state or national offering up packages of financing and tax breaks that will sweeten the deal enough to make a particular location the best financial choice for the company. The governments are making the offers in order to bring employment to the area at the cost of foregone taxes or other costs to the government. If things work out well, this will pay off in lower unemployment and eventual recovery of the costs through property taxes. So, when we win one or lose one of these competitions for business investment, we really won’t know for many years whether that was good or bad. Several years after moving to Winston-Salem, Dell Computers is getting ready to close down a plant that was won with local tax breaks due to a change in the computer business environment. Fortunately, Dell will have to pay back much of the breaks they were given because they didn’t stay long enough.
I hope that our government leaders who negotiate and win such deals are as smart as the folks in Winston-Salem, so that if things don’t go as planned, the local tax payers are not left holding the bag.
