The unfortunate thing is that the same majority of council members put that new policy into immediate use in closed session at the end of this same meeting. City council was asked to approve $300,000 and bail out Don Linder's project to redevelop the former Carolina Circle Mall site with a new WalMart and other potential stores there when a street acccess problem was discovered. There has to be some real legal footwork to apply this policy here since the payment is to go to the current property owner, not the "new" business, and the salary requirements are not going to meet our standards. Also, I question whether sales taxs from this site should be considered "new" revenue since a lot of it will likely be dollars formerly spent at other Greensboro WalMarts.
Does the city really need to be paying incentives to attract this type of development and its lower salaries? The response our city attorney received from the Institute of Government when she consulted them about this proposal was, "Yes, it's legal, but why would you WANT to do it?" My sentiments exactly!
The public hearing on this request is at our June 7 city council meeting, at which time the official vote will be taken for final action. If you have a strong opinion, I suggest you voice it. The incentive obviously passed during our closed session or it would not have made it this far. I would expect it to be officially approved by the same 7-2 vote.
I can hear the laughter now -- Winston/Forsyth gets a Dell. Greensboro gets another WalMart!
10 comments:
I'm with you on this one, Sandy. Greensboro, especially East Greensboro, needs another Walmart like I need more holes in my head. The Carolina Circle Mall was a bad idea when it was built and a worse idea today. When will the city start spending our tax dollars on projects East Greensboro needs? Something like a Restorative Justice Center would be a much better project for East Greensboro.
Billy,
I do not dispute that east Greensboro needs more shopping opportunities. Hwever, given the failure of Carolina Cirlce Mall, K-Mart, and others in that locaion, I question whether WalMart and others will survive there. Will we be wasting more city money on a risky business venture?
Out of curiosity, why didn't Guilford County exert a higher degree of intensified focus and effort on the task of competing for the new Dell operation?
Perhaps the population density of Guilford County, combined with the institutions of higher learning in Guilford County, would have made an excellent choice of locale for Dell.
Personally, I think that all of the 100 counties in the state of North Carolina could market and promote their respective assets more effectively.
By the way, Billy, I love your poetry-oriented weblog. You're a very talented poet laureate.
The offer that Greensboro and Guilford County placed on the table was the most reasonable, affordable offer we felt we could make. At some point, the price gets too high and it's not worth the cost.
Where the Dell site is located, Greensboro/Guilford workers can easily get to it. In fact, reports from our Workforce Development Office which is assisting with employee recruitment has told us that to this point, more employees have been hired from Guilford than from Forsyth.
So Greensboro/Guilford IS benefitting from the new Dell site without having to foot the huge price tag with our tax money. Sounds like a win to me!
Indeed! This is fantastic news!
Personally, I think that Forsyth County delegates overstretched themselves fiscally. An influx of corporate incentives leaves Forsyth County susceptible to the loss of huge sums of funds if the relationship between Dell and the county is severed in the future.
Hi Sandy,
Thanks for you coming out on this situation, and for your position against making it easier to give-away taxpayer money! Perhaps a Wal-Mart on the east side of town is a good thing (I really don't know)...but what's clear here is that "some politicians" did a lot of fancy foot-work to try to hide the fact that they wanted to give away 300k (of taxpayer money, during a budget deficit) to a local developer...but strangly they didn't want it to LOOK like they are giving it to the developer! They want to hide behind the cloak of "Incentives for development", trouble is: WAL-Mart does not need our 300k, heck, that wouldn't even stock the clothing section, which we will desperately need once some members of City Council take the Shirts off our Backs !
I know I will be watching who votes and how (especially those "At Large" incumbants !!
Go Sandy...lets "Roll Back" those looser requirements and make it have a little more accountability!
The reality is that it takes a minimum of five votes to approve anything or "roll back" something. It's pretty obvious to me that there are not five council members willing to change this back at this time.
This latest incentive request is confusing, to say the least.I've been told that I'm wrong, that the incentive is not for WalMart itself but is for the developer (Linder) to take care of the Ring Road access problem. Yet the justifying qualifications are being calculated on the new WalMart employees and their salaries. Our policy clearly states that the incentive is for the new business entity only.
On top of that, we received correspondence yesterday from the attorney representing another affected business on the Carolina Circle Mall site that has actually filed legal action against Linder over these same access issues.
Bottom line, this proposal is a tangled web that I do not want to get caught up in.
Thank you, Sandy, for your persistent, strong, common-sense stand on incentives. I wish that I could still vote for you!
Thank you!
Post a Comment