Gentlemen (Dear Commissioners, July 3, 2013) | Eastern North Carolina Now

Gentlemen,

    I have been told that the August, 2011 land grant for the development of a commercial facility at the Washington Industrial Park has been voided and reworked to allow the principals to acquire a locally tax funded cash grant from Beaufort County to accompany their recent purchase of the vacant Weir Mfg. facility on Old Bath Highway.

    If this is true then it represents a radical change in the purpose announced for the original grant, which was to transfer a lot to the grant's recipient who was then to expand the county tax base by developing a building on the site at the Washington Industrial Park. The change would also represent a new expenditure of actual tax dollars raised from current local tax receipts, rather than the prior sacrifice of otherwise useless land that was, in fact, an established "sunk cost" of the industrial park's well recognized failure.

    If the old owners of the Weir plant and the new buyers of that building were not in perfect agreement on the price at which the property should change hands, then it was their task, as private profit seeking parties, to negotiate until the difference could be reconciled. It was not the place of the county commissioners to bridge the gap by injecting taxpayer funds into a private real estate transaction. Rather, it was Weir's job to lower the price of their asset until buyers were encouraged to purchase it without any help from the taxpayers. If the new buyers could not profitably run their business with those costs in place, then it was their risk to bear. If the new buyers desired a state grant, they could have matched it themselves by virtue of savings created by lowering their purchase price.

    The county board has, in effect, approved a subsidy to a seller of property who is no longer even operating a business in Beaufort County, while at the same time releasing the land grant recipient from any obligation to develop their grant of land at the industrial park; and, incredibly, you have paid that recipient for walking away.

    If I am correct concerning this grant and it's reallocation, then the county commissioners have levied a new tax burden on county residents and at the same time both released the beneficiary of the earlier grant from any obligation to the county and reassumed the burden of ownership for unsellable land at the industrial park. Sadly, since the recipient in question was already committed by the industrial park land grant to create jobs in this county we will not see any net benefit from changing what was the status quo. We only gain the added burden of more cash taxes and worthless additions to our burdensome land inventory. We lose the increased tax base that would have come from developing the original site.

    You have basically traded good cash for what we know is worthless land. Please, stop trying to help. Get out of the way and simply let the free market work.

    Regards,

   Warren Smith
     Beaufort County, NC