If you haven’t already, you can speak out in favor of the County’s participation in the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC) Tax-Increment Financing (TIF) Bonds at the Cabarrus Board of Commissioners’ Meeting at 6:30PM3:30PM (the evening meeting is on May 21). The NCRC project list is out there, the projections are out there - it’s now the time for our elected officials to step up to the plate.
- Project List
- Additional Project Information (Parking Deck Issues, Revenue Impacts, etc.)
- Facts on TIF in North Carolina
Click here for directions to the Cabarrus County Governmental Center where the meeting is held.
Late last year, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Kannapolis Citizen that still does a good job summing up the situation:
In 1803, Thomas Jefferson made a decision which ran contrary to his ideology and agreed to the Louisiana Purchase - more than doubling the size of the United States, insuring access to a port vital to our national interest, and staving off international conflict.The decision was anathema to his belief in state’s rights and the national government’s intervention in state and local affairs. He thought that tyranny from a strong, central government was not much different than tyranny from abroad. The United States didn’t even have the money on hand ($15 Million) to make the purchase and had to borrow. There has never been a move made like that domestically before or since; and it is a perfect example of magnitude of an opportunity trumping ideology.
A little more than two hundred years later, our local leaders face a similar challenge with the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC). Recently, I’ve heard of some opposition to local government’s support of the project. Some have been asking for it to be scaled back or given a lower priority. To the our local leaders, I would like to make it clear that these people are a small, fringe opposition who often have other axes to grind. I live just a few hundred yards from the Kannapolis City line here in Concord and I’m thrilled and excited about the opportunity that the NCRC provides. I’m sure that I’m not alone in encouraging local leaders from Kannapolis, Concord, and both Rowan and Cabarrus Counties to do what it takes to support the NCRC and resulting businesses.
As history progresses, many of the decisions made by our current officials will be forgotten; but our local elected officials and business leaders will possibly be judged solely on the actions that they took related to the NCRC. The question will be this: did they exhibit vision and courage by harnessing the opportunity for this and future generations by acting quickly and decisively or did they buckle under the fear of losing votes from a tiny opposition made up of a scattered lot of myopic curmudgeons?
Justin Thibault
Concord, NC
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Subscribe via E-mail
