Of course not!
Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines is irritated because the Town of Mocksville, a fellow Triad community, is giving Salem Baking Co. more than $600,000 in incentives (plus the potential of $325,000 in state DOT money) to move its Moravian cookie-making westward.
?We?re all delighted to welcome Salem Baking,? (Mocksville) Mayor Francis Slate said during last night?s meeting.
The news didn?t go over so well with Winston-Salem?s mayor, Allen Joines, who questioned whether it was appropriate for a city in the Triad to use incentives to lure a company from another Triad city….
Joines learned of the move when he was contacted by a reporter. He said he was disappointed to hear that Salem Baking would be moving.
?I?m also disappointed that Triad communities are paying incentives to cause companies to relocate in the Triad, especially when they?re using federal dollars to make that relocation occur,? he said.
He said that it doesn?t make sense for communities within the Triad to compete for jobs that are already in the region.
What? Making sense is a prerequisite for distributing targeted government incentives? Since when?
This is not far off from a parody I wrote a few years ago for Carolina Journal‘s “Parting Shot,” which was dated with an eye to the future. You can see that I missed by only a few months.