Charlotte City Council voted 7-4 on Monday to give Carowinds’ parent company $330,000 in incentives to help expand the amusement park. Tonight, the County Commission will vote on whether to hand over an additional $590,000 in incentives, bringing the total local government package to $920,000. Cedar Fair, the parent company, says it’s going to spend $43.5 million expanding Carowinds, including the addition of an extra 60-or-so acres to the park, and it wants some help. The incentives measure passed council scrutiny, although no one has even hinted that Cedar Fair would not go ahead with the expansion if it didn’t get the incentive package, and despite objections from some council members that Carowinds’ summer hiring plans pay too little.
- Inferno Insane (Flickr Creative Commons)
Carowinds says that along with 15 new full-time jobs, it will also hire 270 part-timers next summer at an hourly wage of between $8.10 and $8.25. Councilman Patrick Cannon, who is also the Democratic nominee for mayor in the upcoming election, voted against the incentives because the proposed low wages give him “heartburn and concern.” That’s good – they should give him concern. They should give the rest of us concern as well, including the county commissioners who will vote tonight on the majority of the incentives money.
Charlotte and Mecklenburg County need a living wage law for situations in which taxpayers are asked to give incentives to businesses. Local taxpayers should not have to subsidize any company that will not pay its local employees – teenaged or adult, full-time or part-time – a living wage. That’s simple common sense if A.) local government officials give a rip about wage levels for the area, and B.) anyone is expected to believe the sparkling predictions of economic benefits we always hear during incentives debates. FYI, the living wage for Charlotte/Mecklenburg, as calculated by economists at MIT, is $10.02 per hour.
More than 120 U.S. municipalities, including Durham and Asheville, have passed living wage laws that establish wage standards for companies that receive local government subsidies. Most living wage laws also give employers incentives to provide health care coverage. Councilman Patrick Cannon’s concerns about Carowinds’ low wages for its part-timers are more than justified. Here’s hoping a proposal for a living wage law is in his future plans.
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2013.
Needed: National ban on incentives/bribes/kickbacks/rebates.
Garth:
See, every once in a while we agree on something.
Tell us again who is the “entitlement class”.
Well one of the most troubling entitlement classes is the militarized law enforcement community that you’re defending over on the “don’t they call that murder” thread.
Anywhere where politicians and constituencies are buying each other’s favoritism constitutes an “entitlement class” to me. So that means Jon Corzine & Lloyd Blankfein and Bushbama’s other “bundlers”. It means Raytheon and General Dynamics and Bushbama’s other merchants of death. It means Carowinds and Chiquita and NASCAR and StudioCharlotte and the Light Rail contractors and the trolley supporters. It means Peggy Joseph and the SNAP crowd.
Sorry Garth, but I don’t even understand what you are trying to say in that rambling rant.
keep giving our money to the rich
Mr. Grooms,
Are you privy to the P&L of the company that runs the park? Do you understand how raising wages would impact ticket prices and thus ticket sales? Do you understand that it’s possible that if wages were made to increase that ticket sales would decline and net jobs would be lost? Most of the temporary summer employees are students, I would know since once upon a time I was one. Most of them live perfectly fine on minimum wage, as they live with roomates or parents. I didn’t feel poor working there as a college student and I miraculously broke the chains of poverty and now make 6 figures plus. Your article is once again a bunch of nonsense.
Groomisdumb:
People used to make similar arguments in support of slavery.
Groomisdumb:
probably another out of work biz major – doesn’t sound like he know his arse from his hat, but who cares, just another repooplinut, who pretty soon is gonna suck it hard
Those are moronic comments. Doesn’t surprise coming from liberals. They only knowledge you usually have is worthless (art history majors), and never involves having any kind of economic sense.