The Winston Salem Journal’s Bertrand Gutierrez reported that Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines and Forsyth County chairwoman Goria Whisenhunt were going to meet this week to discuss the utility commission’s Stokes County land deal. I haven’t seen anything reported about such a meeting, so I don’t know if it’s taken place.
Here’s some interesting stuff toward the bottom of Sunday’s story:
The commission was created in 1976 through an agreement between the governments of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. The utility commission can buy land but not own it. Land transactions are done in the name of Winston-Salem.
During public hearings 30 years ago, residents questioned whether the utility commission would serve their interests or those of the business community. Some residents still ask the same questions.
To buy the 434 acres, the commission drew $2.3 million from its solid-waste fund. A few years ago, it took $6.7 million from its water-sewer fund to buy land for the industrial site where Dell Inc. now has a manufacturing plant.
So continues the trend of government and semi-government commissions getting into the economic development business. As examples we have the Triangle Transit Authority moving and shaking in Raleigh and here in the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation pumping the Heart of the Triad.
I realize that a demolition landfill hardly qualifies as economic development. But Forsyth County citizens wouldn’t think their water bill would go toward a computer plant, either. Could it be that, with the new powers these entities find themselves with, aren’t oversights like the one that happened with Stokes County a little more likely?
