Warren Smith: comment on tax funded development | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: Warren Smith spoke to the Beaufort County Commissioners at their December general meeting during the Public Comment period. This post is the editorial meat of what were his comments.

    "..... because of the incentive structures in place, individuals acting in private markets and spending their own money are far less likely to err relative to politicians and bureaucrats spending other people's money in deciding how to allocate scarce resources"

    Not only has Beaufort County established an industrial park program which is obviously preforming as a very poorly allocated use of funds, but since it relies on tax incentives to draw tenants, it is literally a breeding ground for projects either not suited to survive in a competitive market place or willing to sponge off of the vulnerability of the taxpayers as economic developers try to use any means to make the industrial park work. We are imbedding corporate beggars in our community.

    All in all, simply an awfull idea which has wasted money a Tier 1 county can not afford to loose. Three useful guidelines of investment management are:

    1) is the investment suitable to the wealth of the client?
    2) is the overall portfolio of investments diversified?
    3) is there a predefined exit strategy?

    NO. NO. NO.

    Hire a realtor and get this mess behind us. Mr. Thompson has been given all the lee way that anyone could ever have asked for, now the commissioners need to bring in people who have no proprietary interest in proving that the 2006/2011 strategy was ever a workable plan for Beaufort County. No risk manager ever allows the trader that entered a bad trade to manage that trade. The initial investment decision needs to be scraped and new people, people wirh no loyalty to the earlier dream, need to close out the trade.

    The entire point is to sell the facility to tenants, right? So get it sold. Hire professionals to evaluate the project, price it, market it. Do not worry about the loss. The property has lost value. We all know that. The time to have worried about prices was at the market top when you put the money in the trade. Now we just need to end the drip, drip, drip of more money and matching going down the drain.

    Hire realtors. Sell the thing off: free up what is left of our cash, get tenants located and move on.