Mount Pleasant Magazine Sept/Oct 2021

40 www.MountPl easantPodcas t . com | www. ReadMPM. com | www. I LoveMountPl easant . com only affordable but competitive housing in terms of appearance and quality, so housing values around them would not be negatively impacted. One of the keys is to have these homes close to major infrastructure. ON ATTRACTING NEW BUSINESSES Haynie: National studies show that the core values of large corporations seeking to relocate have shifted, and they now place emphasis on community culture and the environment. I have always maintained we need to take care of our people, our economy and our environment, and I have a voting record on all three. Covid taught us that working from home will become more the norm, and we need to make relevant adjustments. As for sites for economic growth, elected officials don’t need to design them — but we need to design the type of community new businesses want to be in. To court new business, I serve with the leaders of business and industry on the Board of the Charleston Regional Development Alliance — the organization that brought the likes of Boeing and Volvo to Charleston. I also serve on the One Region Advisory Committee, a planning initiative that is working on a multi-year regional economic development strategy for the three-county region, including Mount Pleasant. During COVID, we met weekly to help businesses stay safe and reopen safely, and I participated faithfully. Their leaders appeared before Town Council, urging mask requirements for workforce protection during COVID, which I supported. I have made it a point to let those who travel the globe recruiting jobs for our area know how motivated Mount Pleasant is to attract them. Landing: I am a free market business person, but Mount Pleasant is limited for space, and our land is expensive. Our citizens didn’t want to keep seeing large swatches of land go to big residential developments. We need jobs and services on this side of the bridge to support our residents. We need to attract businesses to this community that could easily go to North Charleston, Goose Creek or Summerville. Through the economic development committee that I chair, we have been able to retain companies facing challenges by meeting with them, listening to their concerns and solving problems to help them stay and grow right here. Impact fees, especially for transportation, are the number- one expense that may often work against a company’s plan for locating here, yet we need to maintain and expand our infrastructure. To help businesses who are considering a move here, we extended the time that impact fees may carry over from two years to five if a business leaves and the location is taken over by a new tenant. In the interest of encouraging businesses who want to bring major capital and jobs here, I have brought a reconsideration of the impact fee numbers to Council twice already. The best way to make sure residents don’t have to worry about taxes and fees going up every couple of years is through attracting businesses to help contribute. A good example is the Ferry Wharf development, where the land’s and building’s level of property tax is estimated to approximate the sum of taxes on 1,500 average homes in Mount Pleasant. ON INFRASTRUCTURE Haynie: We are spending tens of millions on transportation projects at this very moment. Improvements to Park West Boulevard will be complete by the time this is published. Other projects north of the IOP Connector include the All American Boulevard project, the Billy Swails Parkway Extension and a new $30 million public service facility on 17 North at Lieben Road. I am proud that I called the meeting to ensure that the Long Point Road extension to Rifle Range would not cut into Boone Hall Plantation. That is an example of protecting what we have before it is changed forever. We are spending millions to improve the intersection at Patriots Point, in preparation for an intensive mixed-use development there, which I voted against due to its density and the 80’ buildings and 65’ parking garages that I feel aren’t fit for this site. My opponent, however, voted in support. I know Highway 41 is on everyone’s mind. We must remember that this is a Charleston County project. The town does not have the authority to design it. We do have local consent under state law, which we used to eliminate Alternative 7A, which funneled traffic into our neighborhoods. We also rose up against the “DNA double helix” intersection design at Highway 17 and the spur into feature Counc i lwoman Kathy Land i ng.