"Gerbing’s Heated Clothing, an apparel company that planned to expand its presence in the Triad by opening a new headquarters in Greensboro, is no longer expected to move into the 200 S. Elm St. location it planned to renovate for new offices."
A little background The Business Journal isn't telling you: I'm being told the City of Greensboro limits incentives to $1,000 per new employee hired but this package was to cost the taxpayers $150,000. While Katie Arcieri of the business Journal writes:
"Gerbing’s, whose headquarters are in Stoneville, had said that it planned to establish a new corporate headquarters within the Elm Street space and create up to 25 mostly new jobs in areas such as sales, marketing, design and research and development."
She also writes:
"Shah-Khan said there was an initial disagreement between city officials and Gerbing's about job creation, and whether the 25 positions would need to be new jobs or jobs that could be transferred. Shah-Khah said the City Council made it very clear that the jobs would need to be new in order to be counted in the incentives deal."
So which is it? And what is the actual amount per new employee hired that the City of Greensboro pays? I e-mailed city staff last week asking to see the strategic formula used to determine the level of inventive that can be offered by the city as mentioned by Mayor Nancy Vaughan in her Dec 29th article, City Handles Incentives Effectively but to date City staff has been either unwilling or unable to produce the "strategic formula" Mayor Vaughan wrote of:
"All economic incentive requests are thoroughly reviewed by staff and a strategic formula is used to determine the level of inventive that can be offered by the city."
Seems to me, as much as this so called "strategic formula" is used that it could be easily found. Who believes they'll ever find it? Who believes they're really busy making up the "strategic formula" as you read this?
Then there's this by none other than Councilman Zack Matheny:
"All they wanted to do was count a couple of jobs that were existing and hired within the last few months," he said.
Matheny said negotiations between Gerbing's and the city lingered on for five months, and that he had requested that the City Council meet and discuss the deal to provide more interpretation.
"We needed to have a clarification, and that didn't happen," he said."
Sure Zack, a couple here, a couple there, a couple more over there and pretty soon you're up to say 20 people or more being transferred from their Stoneville location. I heard the number was more like 4 to 5 jobs. Isn't it pretty damned clear that cities only pay incentives because they expect corporations to put their citizens to work? How damned hard is that for you to understand, Zack? Greensboro isn't interested in paying incentives to put people to work who live in Stoneville and if they already have a job then we've no need to pay incentives in the first place. Tell me Zack, are you a fucking moron or a crook? Seems Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter had concerns as well:
"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 don't think I need to tell you what really happened, do I?
Gerbing’s has proven themselves not to be a good corporate citizen. They have a long history of chasing incentives, cheaper labor, moving operations overseas and now they attempt to swindle us out of incentives for jobs they don't plan to deliver. Duck Head or not we don't need more bad corporate citizens in Greensboro, not now, not ever.
