Gentlemen (Dear Commissioners, September 30, 2012) | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Commissioners have just sold the QSII building. It is impossible to know if they should have waited or continued ownership. What voters can remember is the framework within which the decision was made:

    1) a very low appraisal ($900,000 to $1.07 million) versus cost (north of $2.5 million)
    2) future cash constraints faced by the county budget made financing of QSII difficult
    3) no pre-developed exit strategy

    Going forward, the economic development strategy needs to follow a plan consistent with the decision to liquidate QSII. It needs to avoid the over-reaching, bi-polar, knee jerk reactions which have characterized its entire operational history. Whatever the bright bauble was being chased by the crowd, Beaufort County jumped right into the frenzy.

    EDC and county board members have never checked facts or required in depth study of spending. There was never any study given to Mr. Thompson's putative "86% study" yet the county commisioners spent over $6.5 million based on Thompson's apparently groundless assurances. AEP (ethanol) was a fool's errand, yet it underpinned the rational for the purchase of the Folly on Fredrick Road. SouthTech Plastics was never subjected to any examination of its business plan or financial analysis. Predictably, they folded up before the ink was dry on their grants. Although required by state law and by basic common sense, there has never been a detailed accounting of jobs created which included mandated reporting to the NC Employment Security Commission. Conduct of the county's business was lasy and gullible beyond belief.

    All of this was allowed to happen due to the flimsy oversight, parochial favoritism and conflicted governance of the maze created by the tangled relationship between the economic developer, the county board, the Economic Development Commission and the Committee of 100.

    At the May meeting Mr. Langley and the entire county board promised a "do over" of the economic development process. Sadly, the same group which brought us to this impass was given the task of rewriting the by-laws. It is now late September, has anything at all been accomplished which voters might view as productive of new beginning?

    Regards,

    Warren Smith       Beaufort County