The NC Department of Commerce has released its tier designations for all counties in North Carolina and Bladen County remains a Tier 1 county for 2017. Bladen County Economic Development Director Chuck Heustess said that basically, it means preferential treatment for grant funding opportunities.
“This was completely expected,” said Heustess of the Tier 1 ranking.
Heustess said the Tier 1 designation helps to create an opportunity for companies that are looking to expand their operations and execute projects in economically distressed counties. He said that granting agencies look at many different criteria when considering projects for funding such as number of jobs to be created. Another criteria that agencies can consider is the designated tier for the county in which the project is located.
He said in the past, there were about five tiers in which the counties could be ranked. Currently, there are only three tiers with Tier 1 being the most economically distressed counties. According to the NC Department of Commerce website, County Tiers are calculated using four factors:
- Average unemployment rate
- Median household income
- Percentage growth in population
- Adjusted property tax base per capita
In addition, there are automatic qualifiers for Tier 1 designation. They include having been a Tier 1 county for the past two consecutive years, a population of less than 12,000 people, a population of less than 50,000 AND a poverty rate of 19 percent or higher.
With the current structure, there are 40 counties that have been designated as Tier 1. “Forty is such a huge swath of counties and you don’t really distinguish the economic distress (among those counties) as greatly,” said Huestess.
He said also that a lot of tax credits and incentives that were once afforded to Tier 1 counties have been allowed to expire. Heustess said that, in reality, the preference for grant funding in reality means more to businesses and corporations that are looking to expand their facilities.
Heustess also indicated that 2017 looks to be as strong year in Bladen County. He indicated that some of the larger companies in the county are looking at expanding for first time since 2008.
“We’ve had several years of really slow economic recovery,” said Heustess. He added that opportunities are beginning to develop in the county.
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