Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2014 16:06:12 -0400
From: Caroline Siverson
Subject: Please Post
What follows is a shortened version of the Chatham Citizens for Effective Communities (CCEC) review of the latest State of the County Report. The full review can be found at http://www.chathamcitizens.
CCEC has found that the latest State of the County Report issued by the Board of Commissioners (BOC) contains misrepresentations and distortions.
For example, the BOC claims that Chatham County added 1,177 new jobs in 2011-13 as compared to only 319 in 2009-2010, a claimed increase of 270 percent. But, according to data supplied by the Labor and Economic Analysis Division of the NC Department of Commerce (LEAD), Chatham had employment of 16,498 in 2008 but only 13,880 in the third quarter of 2013 (the last period for which information was available). The BOC brags about 1,177 new jobs, but the unfortunate truth is that 2,618 jobs have been lost since 2008, a decrease of 15.8 percent, not a gain of 270 percent.
More relevant to the BOC’s time period, LEAD reports that since the recession ended in December 2009, Chatham has lost 725 jobs, a 5.2 percent loss, while the State as a whole had a job increase of 2.1 percent. Happily, Chatham gained 287 jobs from the fourth quarter of 2011 to the third quarter of 2013, still far less than the 1,177 reported by the BOC.
Part of the problem with the BOC report is that it uses data supplied by the Chatham Economic Development Corporation (EDC). The EDC only reports new jobs and says nothing about jobs lost or net employment.
The State of the County Report also claims payroll of 28 million dollars associated with the new jobs, as opposed to 11 million dollars for the two earlier years, a claimed increase of 155 percent. Again, the BOC numbers don’t tell the whole story. According to LEAD, Chatham had total wages in the fourth quarter of 2010 of approximately 128 million dollars, but in the third quarter of 2013, that number had dropped to 112 million dollars, not a gain of 155 percent, but a decline of 12 percent. LEAD does report a slight gain in wages from the third quarter of 2012 to the third quarter of 2013.
School Funding
The BOC Report states: “School operations up 20.02 percent.” The surprising distortion in this claim is that, in order to get the 20 percent increase, the BOC used Fiscal Year 2008 as the starting point. But that included increases over four fiscal years involving the prior BOC, and for which the current BOC majority can claim no credit. Indeed, in their first year in office the current BOC majority decreased the school budget from 25.3 million dollars in FY11 to 24.9 million dollars in FY12. Had FY12 remained at the FY11 level of 25.3 million, the increase to FY13 would have been 1.6 percent, not the 20 percent claimed by the BOC.
Environmental Issues
In the March 17 State of the County address, Commissioner Brian Bock stated that the BOC had strengthened environmental protections of Chatham County’s natural resources stating that, “We should be proud that Chatham County took action several years ago to implement storm water and stream buffer regulations that were more stringent than the State recommended with its proposed Jordan Lake Rules.” This statement refers to actions of the prior, not the current, BOC. The current BOC did vote in 2012 to maintain the rules that had been passed earlier by the former BOC.
And Commissioner Bock did not talk about many other actions of the BOC majority under his leadership, which are documented in the public record, including:
— Elimination of staff positions (Sustainable Communities Director and Resource Conservation Manager) and their respective departments that oversaw environmental issues.
— Rescinding of LEED Certification for county-funded buildings.
— Removal of the requirement for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and removal of the Environmental Review Board (ERB) from the review process for commercial projects of 2 or more acres in general-use zones.
— Raising the threshold for the EIA requirement for major subdivisions from 25 lots to 50 lots and removal of the ERB peer review of those EIAs of projects over 50 lots.
— The failure to adequately to protect Jordan Lake in the Chatham-Cary Land Use Plan in the densities allowed in the areas abutting the lake and the failure to specify stream buffer rules for streams that would protect fragile watersheds in case of annexation by Cary.
— Refusal to appoint two highly qualified nominees with environmental expertise nominated by Commissioners Kost and Cross to the Environmental Review Committee (ERC) and the Planning Board respectively for seemingly partisan and ideological reasons.
In addition, the BOC considered two anti-environmental measures, but eventually heeded staff recommendations against taking these steps. They involved moving certain duties from the ERC to the Planning Board; and reducing buffering for certain headwater streams.
The State of the County Report attempts to reassure Chatham Citizens that the BOC recognizes the importance of Jordan Lake as a regional water resource. But the record of the current BOC majority regarding watershed and environmental policies over the past 3 1/3 years has not always shown a strong commitment to environmental protection, and the rules that they are now applauding did not always have their full support.