Two decades ago, it used to be the case that whenever the question of economic incentives came up at a meeting of the Greensboro City Council, the High Point City Council or the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, there was a genuine, sometimes heated debate about whether local governments should give incentives to a company – or even whether they should hand out taxpayer money as a practice to growing companies at all.
Now, that’s just how the game is played, and, these days, in this region at least, a formal request for incentives being put on a local government agenda is really a de facto announcement that a deal has been worked out and the company is moving here or expanding here.
At the Tuesday, July 16 meeting of the Greensboro City Council, the Council approved an economic incentives package of $520,407 for Core Technology Molding Corporation – a minority-owned plastic mold injection business, which will be expanding its business by building a new manufacturing facility on Millstream Road.
The project is expected to mean a capital investment of $27.8 million and create 26 jobs.
At the City Council meeting, Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan said it was wonderful to see a “homegrown” company doing so well, and she thanked company executives for all that the company does for the community.
City Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter echoed those sentiments and said it’s “very exciting” to see a local company growing like this.
On Thursday, July 18, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to approve an incentives package for the company as well.
Presently located on East Gate City Blvd. in Greensboro, Core Technology Molding Corporation produces business and consumer goods created by injected molding, 3-D printing and related processes. It serves the medical device, automotive, aerospace, gaming, pharmaceutical and outdoor lawn equipment industries.
In 2015, Geoff Foster, the company’s founder, CEO and president, was named the Minority Small Business Man of the Year by the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce. Core Technology has been named the Minority Supplier of the Year by the Carolinas Minority Supplier Development Council, Inc. in previous years.
In addition, the company was recently featured in Diversity Plus Magazine.
On July 18, the Guilford County commissioners will also approve over a half million dollars in taxpayer money for the project – $565,290 in that case.
Before the Board of Commissioners votes to hand out the money, the board will hold a public hearing.
The county used to always give out the name of the company early – at the time the public hearing was announced a couple of weeks beforehand. However, now the county has gone to the very annoying practice of using code names only – in this case, “Project Big Joker” and the county only announces the name of the company shortly before the hearing, which often really doesn’t give citizens enough time to decide whether to speak at a public meeting if they have concerns about a particular company.
However, that’s something of a moot point since the decision to grant the incentives packages is made well before the public gets a chance to give input.
According to information from Guilford County, the average wage of the jobs created will be $58,885.
The company will also get incentives from the State of North Carolina.
How is this any different than North Carolina dropping corporate taxes to zero to attract more business even though they have a significant impact on public resources? Seem like conservatives have handed businesses over a billions in incentives to busienss….most of them already here. Makes 500k sound small.
You just don’t get it, Chris. Your reasoning is so simple. Lower corporate taxes affect ALL corporations. Incentives are means of government deciding upon who gets direct payments from taxpayers. This practice is wrong at every level, local and state. One way to stop the practice is to announce at the state level that there will no longer be monetary incentives in NC, that NC’s incentives are lower corporate taxes, a large pool of potential workers willing to work, and no DEI and MWBE interference by government-imposed meddling.
Bingo! Incentives with $$$$ up front are political in nature. They should lower all taxes on businesses, but they won’t do that.
Is it the governors office or the legislature here who okays tge issue if business incentives? I sure have seen Cooper at a lot of ribbon cuttings and pressers
Yeah boy, my tax dollars at work. Who on council got the kickbacks?