Blog Entry
Pork... I mean Stimulus
Published Feb 26 at 12:01 pm
I was updating my status on Facebook the other day when I noticed a friend in SW Mississippi wondering "does Wall Street realize we have been stimulated." I could not help but chuckle. No matter our individual feelings toward pork.. I mean the stimulus bill, I remain the pragmatic optimist that concludes, "if money is to be doled out, let's make sure we get our share." The most widely talked about local project to be included is the new interchange for both the new industrial park and the older Central Industrial Park. I know our friends at Handy Hardware who will be locating in the new park will be excited, but so will all the folks who travel the Bonita Interchange going to and from the mall and the Crossroads shopping center. The Central Industrial Park will at last be afforded a more direct and convenient route to the interstate which will help alleviate the dangerous mixture of Industrial traffic and retail traffic that can create havoc at Bonita. In short, we are using federal money to improve safety and increase the profitability of industrial developments.
The interchange is a perfect project for the stimulus package; it's shovel ready (all right of way has been acquired, engineering completed and is ready for bid) and it is in direct support of Handy Hardware's new location which will create at least 150 jobs. Thankfully, Mississippi Department of Transportation Executive Director Butch Brown had already identified the interchange as a priority project for state funds which were to be phased in with the addition of local match requirements. Now, we will get the all three phases of the interchange at once and without diverting the local funds from other important projects.
What else lies in store for East Mississippi through the stimulus package? We shall see. For the sake of all taxpayers let us hope that the returns on our investments as a country are sensible, viable and preferably immediate so to meet the real need of jump starting our national economy.
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Skip Scaggs, Manager of Business Development
sscaggs@embdc.org