Taking A Stand: You’re in trouble; that’ll be $48K
Warren County is going to go through some rough times due to the loss of Carrier, sending us into economic woes which could last several years.
OK, where’s my $48,000?
Hey, McMinnville and Warren County just coughed up that much so some economist could tell you stuff I’ve been telling you for 50 cents a paper for over a year.
We need higher paying jobs? Well, imagine that. I thought we would go out and seek lower paying jobs. Rough times because our largest employer is leaving us? Well, I thought it would just be one big party around the old money tree. Please, spare me the obvious and stop wasting our money on speakers.
Perhaps instead of paying someone $48,000 to drone on about something I would have told you for a cup of coffee, we should have put the money to better use. Hey, that’s more money than I make in a year, way more, and I’d say it’s way more than you make too. To pay $48,000 for something like that is ridiculous, no matter what spin your government puts on it. And, after that, does it put us any closer to finding a way out of this hole? No. It just gets us $48,000 more into debt.
I’m not saying the economist didn’t have informative things to say, but they are things any smoe on the street can understand. Yes, we need to cut the red tape for companies who want to locate here. Yes, we need to provide spec buildings for companies. And yes, we need to have an aggressive recruitment campaign for good-paying jobs. I’ve long said this.
Frankly, to have to filter everything through a body of 24 county commissioners, most of whom couldn’t agree with each other on where to eat lunch on a given day, is foolhardy. What we need is a small group of recruiters who have the “complete power” to negotiate in the name of Warren County, a group of locals trusted enough to make a deal, where they don’t have to come back to the commission to wipe their noses every day.
We need a group which has the power to say “yes” to waiving property taxes should it be a big plant without fear of the commission coming behind them and saying “no.” Bridgestone is yet to pay property taxes. That’s just the way it works when it comes to factories with lots of jobs.
What we need, I’m saying for 50 cents, is a task force of businessmen who will be entrusted with our economic future, a group that will serve as our corporate board of directors. Business needs answers right there and then, not next month. We need to free up the road to progress by getting the red tape out of the way. There’s too many chiefs and not enough Indians when it comes to recruiting industry here.
And, this is the time to act. In times before, our unemployment was so low there wasn’t many large companies who could see getting a large enough work force to make a go of it here. Now, the number of workers is starting to rise, giving companies a proven workforce, not just a bunch of loafers who feel they are owed a living by the government.
However, if we do the same old things, we will continue getting the same old results and we’ll find ourselves in the same shape we were in during the 1980s with double-digit unemployment. This reconstruction of the way we go after business should be our county’s No. 1 focus right now.
Of course, no one listens anyway, even when we pay someone $48,000 to say it. Next time, just take the money and have a big party and we can play the fiddle while Rome burns because that’s what we’re basically doing now.
(Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)