Economic Development: Move to Kingsport area if you want low pay and lack of good paying jobs
The May, 2009 unemployment rate for the City of Kingsport was 12.6 percent. Retail sales growth is not keeping up with the inflation rate and Kingsport has a declining population. The Kingsport area, in a recent report by Kiplinger, has the highest cost of living, the lowest household income, and the worst job growth in Tennessee. See the link Kingsport Facts
Kingsport, as I have said many times needs to get industry to locate here that offer good paying jobs. More retail jobs aren’t needed. Get the good paying jobs first and then retail jobs will open up.
After giving it much thought, I have come to the collusion that the City of Kingsport, Chamber of Commerce, Networks, and Sullivan County are not capable of getting the type of jobs that the area needs. I’m sorry that I have to be blunt, but it is the truth and in my view these organizations are nothing more than a social/political club that cater to special interest groups. Look at the facts! Sure, there have been some gains, but these have been mostly in the retail/food areas.
We need the involvement of the State of Tennessee to help get jobs here. The State was able to help Chattanooga, Cleveland, and Clarksville get new manufacturing firms to locate in those cities and North Carolina was able to woo Google and Apple Computer to locate to North Carolina. North Carolina has changed some of its laws to make it easier for firms to locate to North Carolina. Because of the changes made at the state level in North Carolina, they will get an Apple Computer $1billion datacenter that will be built not far from the Google datacenter in Lenoir, NC. North Carolina also gave incentives to get these firms to locate to North Carolina.
Kingsport has relied too long on Eastman and it is time to get other firms here. Get rid of the mindset that economic growth is retail and get new people in those organizations that can go after manufacturing and technology firms. The economic development direction that the Kingsport area has been using is quite simple not working. See the link, Best and Worst Cities in Tennessee
The Higher Education Center is good, but I get the impression that the city thinks that firms will come to the city in droves because we have a bunch of smart cookies here. Upper Mississippi, I am sure did not wait to build a higher education center to attract car makers or did Lenoir, NC wait to have the type of employees that Google wanted trained before going after the Google business.
The time to act is now! The population of Kingsport has declined. Having more educated people trained at the Higher Education Center and the lack of jobs that would be attractive to them will insure that the declining population will get worse as they look elsewhere for employment.
Ask your state, county,and city elected officials what have they done to help spur economic growth for the area. Ask them for specific results and then you can decide if they are helping the area with good paying job growth.
I think that this falls under the heading of “be careful what you ask for, you might get it”. In other words,when people keep demanding more government involvement, then politicians use that as a rationale to increase the size of government and to rush into economic development “deals” that may turn out to be bad over the long run (10 years or more). Typical of these are the tax incentives we shower on some businesses. By the time it is apparent that the deal was not cost effective, the elected folks that orchestrated the deal are out of office.
Unfortunately we have a recent history in Kingsport of our officials spreading the costs out over a large base (all the taxpayers) to build projects that significantly help a few special interests. And you want to trust these folks to do deals with private industry? Seems to me we need more Free Market and less government involvement. Pat Shull
AMEN!
This is called corporate welfare. Grants here grants there this money is being stole from all of us, only to given to a few.
If we can give one a tax incentive say 26mil break (Eastman). That means we are taxed too much. Imagine if we didn’t have to pay 1.3mil a year to MeadowView 14mil to a water park. another 300,000 for flowers, over 300,000 for lights in a park that many if not most will never see. WE are spending at rates we can not keep up with, rates we can not back up. 250,000 to warriors golf mountain, another 350,000 to cattails.
We have no economic freedom
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Hello Pat, Just yesterday I was at home. There is a little circle where I live and a park. Many times , not just during fun fest. Hot Air balloons come here and fillup and take off from our little park for practice. Yesterday was that kind of a day. We had a visit from “Rosey” the hotair balloon. We walked over and watch and swang and mainly talked to the owner of Rosey the balloon. They are sponsored by Indian Path Hospital. They were very concerned about the BMA in Kingsport. They begged us to be sure and let them know ……exactly what we were telling them (the owners of Rosey) that the only thing we REALLY love is the HOT AIR BALLOON RACE. They are afraid they are going to lose their sponsorship . I told them that It doesn’t make sense to me that the monies aren’t there like they use to be because. Kingsport, TN received approx. 4mill. in stimulus from Obama. They are charging much higher prices for WHAT THEY are still doing at funfest. The owners of ROSEY have a problem with Mallicote , Phillips ….well they think he really . However, they had much good to say about PAT SHULL. We laughed and joked about the amount of people that voted in the election . Also, we lamented about how shamelessly the BMA campaigned AGAINST one of their own….PAT SHULL. Sinery I think the tax break was 28 mil. for TEC. With Obama’s Tax on the uncapped emmissions TEC may be gone or own by CHINA. This town is now coming down on the side of banning guns by permit holders to be carried into parks. Parks that our tax dollars are paying for and will , no doubt, continue to rise to help them (the gang of 6 ) pay for Meadowview. Kingsport is in sad shape. Our Wholesales Hardware Business could not have a convention at meadowview it’s too small. We had 600 vendors at our last one we had to hold the convention in Cinncinati. It will never stop with this meadowview thing . I just want more people to lose the APATHY and go to the BMA and tell the gang what you think. Instead it’s people that are FOR Denny and the others that go and feed his already bloated ego.
The way the BMA can spin the figures for this area is amazing.
Mallicote is the one that calls alot of the shots on the BMA because he is a lawyer. I can’t stand what we are up against . I have to fight against the spirit of APATHY. Thanks Doris for the reminder.
News in Kingsport, TN. is what I look for on this website. It’s good to see some new news that the KTN will not touch.
Interesting discussion!
But what would you propose be done to address the declining population, low wages, high unemployment in Kingport, retail sales not keeping up with inflation, etc.
If you were to give an incentive to a new company to get them to locate here, would you do it or let them go to another state.
If you gave them a tax incentive to be applied against future tax bills, would that be ok? Would that be ok as long as you didn’t give them money upfront or money that has to given by the taxpayers.
Maybe, having dancing girls to attract new business is all we need.
I would give tax breaks from cutting all this junk off our books. Imagine if we got rid of all this money flowing out or pockets we never see. Last I looked it was 4,231 per person in Kingsport.
Current problem
No jobs for middle class. There are little jobs for people in the market at above min wage. This creates a problem Those people will not move here. Those are the people that raise average size families. In the past they use to be hired at Eastman (problem they still are the same ones), they still work there and their kids have nowhere to work they have to move and leave the area. Knoxville and Nashville are getting our 20 and 30 somethings. If we are “recruiting the individual” would it not be wise to make the individual less taxed?
Solution: cut spending reduce taxes. This allows the middle income to move back, others now can afford to live here except low income that lives off government, and high income all the dr’s & nurses we have here.
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During a debate Ben Malicote said he didn’t want to attract “smoke stack factories” to Kingsport and now Kingsport is reaping the “benefits” of this policy. Kingsport Times News is just a propaganda machine for the BMA and their cronies.
Another bad problem is. We keep getting sold that these “investments” create jobs. We where told that meadowview would bring in industry and all skill level jobs. The government can not create jobs nor can it wealth. It has to take them from somewhere. Kings for example is said the same thing it will create jobs. I think the same thing was/is used for aqualand. It simply does not. When you have no fear of failure because you a propped by a communist government taking from the citizen their fruits and labor then what incentive do you have to exceed?
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1. I would not spend 37.4 mil on an aquatic center.
2. Offer tax incentives to manufacturing and other industry . We have a lot of WAREHOUSE SPACE here.
3. Fix the Road and Streets. Hire people to fix the street from this area do not go to Oregon to hire people.
4. Do away with 9.5 % sales tax and cut it back to 6% . Have a referendum vote on giving the added .25 . NOT DANCING GIRLS and that is a typical thinking.
give the $.25 back to the property owners.