03/28/2024
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By Erin Smith

The NC Department of Commerce has released its tier designations for all counties in North Carolina and Bladen County was identified as a Tier 1 County. Bladen County Economic Development Director Chuck Heustess said that, basically, the designation means preferential treatment for grant funding opportunities.

“We (Bladen County) are no where near changing to a different tier,” said Heustess of the Tier 1 ranking.

Heustess said that Bladen County is actually in the Top Ten Most Distressed Counties. He added that for economic development, that is actually a positive thing. Heustess said the Tier 1 designation helps to create opportunities for companies that are looking to expand their operations and who are willing to execute projects in economically distressed counties.

Heustess said that granting agencies look at many different criteria when considering projects for funding such as the number of jobs to be created by the project. Another criteria that agencies can consider is the designated tier for the county in which the project is to be located.

Heustess said that the Tier 1 designation can also be an advantage when applying for certain state and some non-state grants.

“The agencies use tier rankings to the more distressed counties preference on grant applications,” said Heustess. He added it also allows for greater incentives with less of a county match.

Currently, there are only three tiers with Tier 1 being made up of 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.

There are 40 counties that are designated as Tier 1, 40 counties that are designated as Tier 2 and 20 counties designated as Tier 3.

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