ALL:
Please note that this coming Monday, June 6th, 2016, at 6pm is the Randolph County Commissioners’ meeting for June, 2016.
The agenda is included below as part of this email; if you can attend, please do so. Highlighted in red are a couple of items that may be of interest and somewhat summarized below.
1) West Randleman Business Park item was approved by commissioners to be pursued via a loan of $762,000 in February, 2000. Randolph
County agreed to pay interest costs that was estimated then to be
$53,000—$58,000 per year. I think the Park only contains an emergency
response facility. I also think the offer to purchase the remaining
property is in the neighborhood of $400,000ish. It is assumed that the
market value is in the neighborhood of the original price of $762,500,
and since the County cannot sell for less than the market value, I think
the plan is to "sell @ market value" while giving the buyer incentives
to offset the differences from market value ($762K??) versus offered
value ($400Kish???). I think the incentives are centered around the
buyer agreeing to provide 50ish jobs over the next 5 years or so. Not
sure of complete accuracy of this paragraph; however, the gist of the
paragraph is believed to be correct.
- Specific verbiage from minutes of February 7, 2000, commissioners’ meeting states: “Bonnie
Renfro, President of the EDC, stated that Randolph County has very few
industrial sites or facilities available for industries seeking
placement here. Therefore, EDC has purchased an option on a 47.3 acre
industrial tract in Randleman that can be marketed, developed, and sold
to support quality economic development to benefit Randolph County. Ms.
Renfro said that EDC is seeking a 100% loan of $762,500 through
voluntary partnership of local financial institutions who are members
of Randolph County Partnership, the private membership of the EDC. The
EDC board is requesting that the County pay the interest costs
associated with the purchase, which should be $53,000—$58,000 per year, depending upon the interest rate.
-
On motion of Frye, seconded by Davis, the Board unanimously agreed to
pay interest costs on the loan for the EDC’s purchase of the 47.3-acre
tract located at the intersection of Commonwealth Road and Island Ford
Road in Randleman.
As I
understand one of the suggested items of the recently developed
strategic plan for Randolph County is the desire by our economic
developers to have multiple ‘site-ready’ sites for economic development.
Apparently this Randleman site, available for the past 16 years, has
not been successful in helping fulfill that role.
2) Reference the "Approve Repayment Agreement with the Department of Commerce-PetPro Resources—Bonnie Renfro”. I have
heard that PetPro may have entered bankruptcy. You may remember that
PetPro received a grant from the State of NC to set up manufacturing in
Seagrove (I think utilizing an existing building) during the past couple
years or so. Randolph commissioners approved support for PetPro
receiving the grant, and Randolph may have had to put some matching
funds into the effort for PETPro to get the State grant??. Now that
PETPro has entered into bankruptcy, I understand that the State of NC
wants their grant dollars returned by Randolph County (think this is
somewhere around $100,000?). I don’t think this information was made
available to the commissioners when they originally approved support to
the PETPro grant. Regardless, it looks like the people of Randolph
County are again being asked to ‘bail out’ County action. As
stated above I am not sure of the complete accuracy of this paragraph;
however, the gist of the paragraph is believed to be correct.
3)
It seems that the above two items certainly have a correlation to the
megasite efforts including some of the people supporting/working the
megasite efforts.
Your attendance and support continues to be important as we continue to address the megasite concern.
Thanks, and hope to see you Monday night.
Bobby Ferguson
Bobby Ferguson is a resident and farmer in Randolph County and has been a leader in the fight against the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite.
