Vote "No" on raising sales tax! | Eastern North Carolina Now

   The I-95 corridor is no stranger to the disastrous mistakes of economic developers. An hour away to our south, Kinston has Global TransPark, a $95,000,000 tax initiative which after twenty years has created only 400 jobs. Nearby, in Raeford, a $100,000,000 tax incentivized ethanol plant is in bankruptcy. An hour to our north is Roanoke Rapids and the Randy Parton Theater, a $20,000,000 outdoor-theater and tragedy that will drag on that community's tax base for generations to come.

    These were serious mistakes that we could have learned from, but we didn't.

    The Beaufort County Economic Development Commission (EDC) was able to fund our disaster by spending somewhat more than $6,500,000 to create two poorly planned, underutilized industrial parks and one very large and very empty commercial building. Quick Start II is a bright blue cloud of a building located in the center of the Washington Industrial Park to the west of town. Its color was initially chosen as an inducement to the Honeywell Corporation. However, once the building's skin was installed, Honeywell lost all interest and we have been left with a building designed in the corporate colors of a business that spurned our offer. Beaufort County was more or less left at the altar. Hope had overcome good judgment.

    What are the odds of Apple or FedEx or Coco Cola taking up residence under Honeywell's flagship colors? Having Quick Start II's color scheme laid out in a manner so strongly reminiscent of another company's rejection of the industrial park is probably a discouragement to every other major corporation with a national profile. Frankly, it leaves Quick Start II seeming a bit picked over, a second best choice.

    Whether we see the building's color scheme as humorous or poignant, it is a tangible example of the lack of due diligence and the triumph of amateur hope over prudent risk management, which has characterized the EDC's entire history. It is carts before horses at the EDC. Empty promises consistently trump honest achievement.

    Decision after decision and year after year the Economic Development Commission has committed taxpayer money to poorly thought out projects at exactly the wrong moment. However, the county commissioners have never required that the EDC undergo an independent review, neither have they brought in independent commercial realtors to assess a proper, public price and strategy for selling Quick Start II. Instead, our elected officials have chosen to throw good money after bad and to hike taxes on local residents rather than require accurate reporting and full verification of the questionable claims the EDC makes as to its performance.

    The EDC has created a bureaucratic live-style of closed meetings, political friendships and vague reporting, while commissioners have consistently disadvantaged taxpayers to protect the EDC. Now the commissioners are reported to be requesting that taxpayers approve yet another business stifling tax increase in May. Why should local residents be asked, in effect, to vote for added subsidies for failing projects?

    Enough is enough. Vote "No" and mean it.