Retail vacancies crept up in the quarter to 10.5 percent
from 10.3 percent in the first quarter,
Office vacancies Triad-wide were unchanged in the second quarter at 18 percent.
In the industrial market,
warehouse vacancies edged higher in the quarter Triad-wide,
from 22.5 percent to 22.6 percent
The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area
Incentives plan is folly -- and illegal
Over the last six weeks, we have read about Guilford County commissioners Vice Chairman Steve Arnold’s new incentive policy, which purportedly will offer assistance to small businesses by rebating their taxes on new and expanded facilities.
Arnold’s proposal…violates the basic tenet of taxation in North Carolina: Except under very precise limitations (like returning tax overpayments), rebating taxes in North Carolina is illegal. Specifically, N.C. General Statute 105380 calls for “No taxes to be released, refunded, or compromised.”
…Jonathan Morgan of the UNC School of Government and former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Orr concur that the proposal raises serious legal questions.
Novel policy? Trying something that hasn’t been tried before?
Sure, no one has tried this methodology — because it’s simply illegal. One or 11 Guilford County commissioners supporting the proposed policy just doesn’t matter and makes it no more legal. Yet, Arnold persists in this quixotic quest to arbitrarily reduce taxes for developers.
Developers, you might ask? Yes, precisely.
…the development community did not put this proposal forward; it is a creature of the creative mind of Steve Arnold. Arnold has been a developer for years, so he knows exactly who will benefit from his proposal.
…this policy would allow huge tax breaks to developers — including those from outside the region and out-of-state developers and builders — for the next Walmart, or CVS drugstore, or the next strip center hosting a tanning salon, nail painting and another Subway restaurant.
The sad truth is that this will almost certainly not help the small business itself. It will provide assistance to the owner/developer/builder (i.e., “taxpayer”) of the property, not the operator, except in that rare circumstance they are one in the same.
…These are the people who would get the bulk of the money from the policy: landowner, developer and builder — not the mom-and-pop storefront printer, florist or day care operator whom the proposal purports to assist. First illegal, now poorly developed and misguided.
Arnold knows that rebating taxes is illegal. Guilford County staff told him that repeatedly.
...This proposed policy needs to be quickly and thoroughly dismissed.
Former county economic developer
Consultant in economic development policy
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