Agenda Package 4-1-13 - Reg. Meeting

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We understand the rationale behind this point and that it is supported by a 3,600 signature petition. With that stated, our concern with this particular provision is how do you enforce it objectively, particularly when there is a desire to focus recruitment efforts on like industry types or "clusters "? Furthermore, we find this item to be anti - competitive and it sets the County Commissioners up to be subjective arbiters of competition, which, if legal, would present a myriad of challenges to the individual commissioners. We also have empirical evidence of the long -term results of this type of policy or guideline in the form of Siler City, NC. For years, the Boling Chair Company did everything in their power to exclude other industry in order to protect its labor force. Now Boling Chair is gone and where is Siler City from an Economic Development standpoint. 4. While we like the job creation guideline we disagree with this guideline. We think a tiered system that rewards job creation andlor investment is a better approach. Our thoughts are the minimum level of job creation ought to start at 10 jobs with more incentives, either a higher percentage of property tax relief, number of years or both, provided for different levels of job creation. We feel that providing annual reports when provided to the NC Department of Revenue should be sufficient with the idea being to limit the staff required to audit the company's employment while concurrently not being more burdensome on employers. 5. Understood and Agreed. 6. As stated in #4, we think a tiered system for investment is the way to go. We would recommend a starting point of $1.5 Million in new investment with more incentives provided, as described in #4, the higher the new investment. 7. While sympathetic to the intent behind this guideline, we cannot support this wording due to the fact that in practice, most corporate counsels will not allow their client to sign such a provision due to the potential for technical violation. We think this can be better covered in the individual incentive agreement versus publishing it as an adopted guideline and support the idea to avoid misunderstandings as has happened previously. 8. We do not agree with the wording of this guideline. Based on the current environment, not being able to discuss an incentive package will eliminate Lee County from every site selection process and possibly eliminate it from the list of communities that the Department of Commerce will work with. 9. We do not agree with the language of this guideline. It has been our experience and observation that infrastructure is generally provided in addition to the property tax incentive and should not be viewed as an alternative to them except in unique circumstances. In those unique cases, it would be dealt with in that specific agreement and thus is better off being left unstated in these guidelines or have the phrase "in addition to" inserted. 10. Agreed and Understood.