Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Growing 9th District economies

By Michelle Saxton
Thursday, October 28, 2010

New Hanover County’s great quality of life must remain a priority for the area to grow and attract jobs in the future, North Carolina’s 9th District state Senate candidates say.

"The quality of place in New Hanover County is something that brings lots of people here, and we want to make sure that we maintain that," Republican Thom Goolsby said Monday, Oct. 25. "There’s all sorts of ways to grow jobs, good jobs, jobs that require intellectual capital, clean jobs."

Goolsby wants to reduce state taxes and state spending to encourage businesses to come here.

"Where the state falls down on the job is over taxation and overspending at the state level," Goolsby said. "The private sector creates jobs, not the government."

The future lies with a balance of green businesses, clean businesses, entrepreneurial activity, tourism, cultural activity, intellectual activity and a retirement center, Democrat Jim Leutze said Friday, Oct. 22.

"We have to have a mixed economy here," Leutze said. "We need to be very careful that we do not do things that will destroy or make more difficult our being a cultural, intellectual, clean jobs center."

Goolsby and Leutze are running for the seat left open by Sen. Julia Boseman, D-New Hanover, who chose not to run for a fourth term.

Neither candidate supported the plan for Titan America’s proposed cement plant at Castle Hayne and the Northeast Cape Fear River.

"The state Senate doesn’t support or not support businesses coming," Leutze said. "I would prefer not to have Titan because I’m concerned about the pollution that they would put into the air, as well as the discharge into the river."

Goolsby said, "My problem with Titan is the fact that it was an issue of tax credits being given to businesses to bring them into our area. The best way to encourage business and jobs in New Hanover County is by reducing everybody’s taxes when it comes to land use and those types of issues."

Finding adequate funding for beach renourishment continues to be an important issue for the area, Goolsby and Leutze agreed.

"We need to work very hard with our congressional delegation, who are hopefully going to be majority Republican, to make sure that we continue to get the federal monies for that," Goolsby said. "We also have to plan how to handle the situation if that doesn’t work out."

Besides federal erosion-control money, part of New Hanover County’s room occupancy tax is used to fund area beach renourishment projects.

"We have to renourish our beaches," Goolsby said. "And Carolina Beach is the first one that’s up for reconsideration in just a few short years."

The federal government has been cutting back on beach renourishment funds in recent years, Leutze said.

"Every year they zero it out of the budget, and then you have to have people in Congress who are there to try to help you get that funding. And Congressman McIntyre has been quite successful in helping us in that regard," Leutze said. "But that money is not always going to be there, particularly when we have the economic crisis we have in the country today. We’re going to have to come up with another way of funding beach renourishment."

That can be done locally or through a mix of state and local funding, Leutze said.

"The problem with local money for beach renourishment is if local communities pay the full cost of beach renourishment they have every reason to say that the public cannot have access to those beaches, that those beaches now are private," Leutze said. "We don’t want to see that happen."

Leutze said he would try to get a mix of state and local funding, with local money coming from some kind of tax or fund.

"Then the trick becomes convincing people in Winston-Salem that they have an interest in renourishing Wrightsville Beach," Leutze said.

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