This past week, we had the great news about Nature’s Earth Pellets Company coming to the Eaton Plant in Laurinburg, a move that will generate close to a hundred well-paying and much-needed jobs. The Scotland County economic development team and our new Economic Developer Greg Icard deserve a lot of credit for bringing this about.

The excitement of landing an industry and the immediate impact on job creation should not, however, lure us back into the familiar old model of economic development. Though I am as thankful as anyone else that Nature’s Earth is coming and the 95 jobs (we hope) along with it, we must realize that outside industries are not going to lead our city to prosperity or significantly impact our unemployment rate. Over approximately the last 10 years, we have seen precious few jobs generated by outside industry and the few that have come have generally only come because we had an incredible building to offer them basically for free (GoJo paid $1 for the Abbott building and now they’re gone, Natures Earth paid Eaton approximately $250,000 for the Eaton Plant and Hellman with their 115 jobs coming to West Point). The only industries that have come in the last 10 years without a multimillion dollar facility essentially given to them is Embrex, which generated 15 jobs, the Gryphon Company, which will create approximately 50 jobs at the airport and MSD in Laurel Hill, but they’ve left. Of course many of these jobs will not even be filled by people living in our county and many of the managers choose to live in Moore County-both factors that dampen the economic impact of these industries coming here. So, in the last 10 years, despite the tremendous time and effort that our county has spent trying to lure outside industry, and the incentives we’ve offered and the ‘spec’ building we’ve erected, we have brought in approximately 250 jobs, or 25 jobs a year (less than 2 percent of our workforce). Meanwhile, over the last ten years we have lost thousands of jobs due to loss of industry. And yet, I still get the sense that people, especially people in leadership positions, think that recruiting outside industry should be the top priority for economic development. How long can we bang our heads against the wall before we knock some sense into ourselves?

Instead, why don’t we take our heads out of the sand and take a good look around? Why don’t we look up the road at Moore County, with an unemployment rate that usually is around 5 percent. Why don’t we look at New Hanover County (Wilmington) who has seen tremendous growth over the last 10 years? How is it that they are doing so well and we are not? The answer is because people want to move there, people want to visit there and people want to stay there when they retire. And lo and behold that creates a thriving economy. In the US, over 70 percent of jobs, and the number is steadily increasing, are in the service sector and more people means more services. They need places to eat, they need nurses and CNA’s, they need handy men and lawyers and policemen etc.

And so you say, mayor, are you not aware that those places offer so much more for people? You say, mayor, do you not realize the reason people don’t move, visit, retire here like they do there is because we can’t compete with places like those? I say that there is nothing holding us back from being an absolutely fantastic place but ourselves. Until all of the elected officials of Scotland County make a wholehearted commitment to focusing on making our community into a more attractive place and instilling more pride in our community and confidence in the leadership, than we will not see a change in the number one thing on citizens minds, which is jobs,jobs,jobs. If we could follow the examples being set throughout our community by people making the effort to help make our community more attractive, such as the American Legion renovating our distinctive landmark Legion Park and the Highland Games Committee doing so much work to relocate the Highland Games here in Scotland County, than we would grow. Only then will we see the unemployment rate come down, you can bet on that.