BC 2010 04 19 Regular - Laserfiche WebLink

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April 19, 2010 (Regular Meeting) Page 1895 at the same time circulating more than $180,000,000.00 million dollars through our local economy via payroll dollars. Those payroll dollars help our friends and neighbors pay their mortgages, finance their cars, support our not-for-profits, put their kids through college, and put food on our tables. You have a record in creating jobs. Now it is true that you are the primary funder of the Cabarrus Economic Development Corporation. Over the last six years you have provided $2.6 million dollars or about $434,000.00 dollars per year. In return the EDC works with local companies which want to expand, recruits new industry, creates new jobs, and markets Cabarrus County to the world. Working with you over these last six years we have been blessed to realize almost $400,000,000.00 million dollars in new capital investment-which is 15 times the amount of investment the county has made-not to mention the payroll making its way through the Cabarrus economy and the thousands of residents who have jobs today that might not otherwise have them. Thank you for your investment in job creation and thank you for your willingness to take calculated risks on behalf of those who need jobs. Thank you for your record. That sets the stage for CELGARD. Our timeline for CELGARD began September 18, 2009 with a call regarding Project Gold. However, we would not have received that call were it not for prior actions taken by the EDC. The funding you provide has allowed us to participate in North Carolina's Certified Site program. As we were seeing more and more project activity coming to Cabarrus County because of the work of the EDC, we knew in order to be more competitive with other counties in the state and in order to be top-of-mind with the state's department of commerce we would have to certify some sites. We spent budget dollars to certify sites, including sites in the International Business Park. Part of that process requires statewide developers from commerce to walk the site. When Project Gold finally got hot after travelling around the region as a project, our Certified Site manager from NCDOC suggested the site in the International Business Park because she remember the certification process and the potential value of the site. So again, our work on your behalf, the monies we spent and the relationships built and the certification of the site lead to an opportunity. We were initially competing with other North Carolina sites and well as locations in four other states. We are grateful to Chairman White for his availability in spending time with us, with officials from NCDOC and with other local elected officials. He has been willing to arrange his schedule, sometimes at the last minute, to meet with projects, to tour companies, and to work with key officials in making opportunities like this available to the citizens of Cabarrus County. Project Gold, CELGARD, as we now know it, has been a very complicated project. We have worked on this project in Raleigh and in Charlotte, in Japan and in Washington, D.C. It has bipartisan support and I'm proud that our Board of Commissioners can provide the final approval to make this job creator a reality. I believe you are fully apprised of the details of this deal, those details having been advertised as part of the Public Hearing process. I'm pleased to stand before you tonight asking for these incentives knowing that Cabarrus County has always received more back in taxes than it has granted and that no Grant I have ever requested of you has failed to perform. Even with the troubled economy and even though we have come through twelve months of double digit unemployment, we are still the second most employed county in the region. As I have often said, we will rebuild our local economy one job at a time and we are. Even a strong employer like Connextions will go through uncertain workforce conditions from time to time, they have outperformed every hope we had for them when their Grants were