Now lets be clear, as I wrote in Incentives? We don't Need Your Stinkin' Greensboro Incentives, the Gerbing incentive package fell through but the story of how it came to be passed by the Greensboro City Council demonstrates one of the most irresponsible uses of incentives ever passed by any city government despite Mayor Nancy Baracat Vaughan's insistance to the contrary in her Sunday, December 29, 2013 News & Record article, City Handles Incentives Effectively. We begin with video of the City Council meeting in which 8 of 9 Council members voted to give $150,000 in incentives with only Tony Wilkins voting against.
Why is the City of Greensboro investing more than John Lomax, owner of the Meyers Building? Why are we paying incentives to a company when it is already known they have no intentions of hiring Greensboro workers?
Yes, Dear Readers, Your's Truly made that little fact public on Monday before the Tuesday night city council meeting but Council including Nancy Baracat Vaughan, voted to give away $150,000 of your money to locally connected developer John Lomax even though said incentives would not increase the tax value of the property nor would said incentives put 1 more unemployeed Greensboro worker back to work. That's right not one. I wrote then:
"The people who will be filling those jobs already work for Gerbings in Stoneville and will most likely be commuters. This is not more new jobs for the people already living in Greensboro."
As a matter if fact, the Rhino confirms that Gerbing had no intentions of bringing a bunch of new jobs to Greensboro:
"City Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter, who under the former council was also a member of the Economic Development Committee, said that she, too, heard Gerbings had an internal dispute over strategy, particularly whether the 25 jobs had to go to Greensboro residents or could be moved from Stoneville."
I mean seriously folks, John Lomax wanted $150,000 for a building he already owned and was only planning to invest $116,000 of his own money. Seems to me, with a tennant like Gerbling's he could have borrowed $150,000 from a bank but John Lomax didn't want to borrow money, millionaire developer John Lomax only wanted free money so he could afford more trips to Bermuda on your tax dollars just as he's done before.
So John Lomax gets a tennant for his building and Gerbing is still coming to Greensboro because Tom Nolan, President and CEO of Prospect Brands LLC, which owns Gerbing's, lives in Greensboro because like most elitest CEOs he feels he's above living and working in Stoneville, North Carolina with Gerbing's rank and file mill workers who might actually figure out he rarely comes to work at all if his office were in Stoneville.
Tom Nolan should feel right at home with Nancy, John Lomax, Zack and the rest of the Irving Park Country Club crowd who have for years used "economic incentives" as a means to pad their own pockets at your expense.
I told you Nancy Baracat Vaughan would be taking a flying leap. And it only gets worse from here on out.
Please continue reading Incentives In Greensboro: Part 4. Someone needs to check on Nancy.
