The Issues

Foster Development of Small Business

Businesses provide jobs and pay taxes to local government. Workers patronize local businesses and purchase their goods and services and pay sales taxes. Eighty-nine percent (89%) of jobs in Guilford County come from small business. Yet High Point government’s incentives to small businesses are zero. This makes little sense. Rather than give grants to small start-up businesses, it would be more cost-effective to establish an incubator for these start-ups. Many start-ups fail within a year because they are overwhelmed with regulatory and administrative requirements. The concept of an incubator is to acquire vacant warehouse or showroom and divide it into cubicles for small businesses. The key to success is a central office which would provide services to all businesses such as accounting, taxes, management consulting, marketing, advertising, etc. After a period of 3-5 years, a business should be ready to strike out on it’s own and be replaced by another start-up.

A Cleaner, Greener High Point

One of my goals is to see High Point become a cleaner, greener city that will serve as a model for other municipalities. Travel any highway or street in High Point and you will see litter and trash along these routes. Some are worse than others. One could charitably allow that some trash blows off of open back trucks. But the truth is that most of the trash is willful-citizens too lazy to take their soda cans, paper, cigarette butts, etc. home for the garbage can.
My proposal is for the city to contact businesses, civic organizations, churches and schools and ask them to join an “Adopt a Highway” program. These groups would be responsible for the periodic cleanup of a stretch of highway or street. The city can obtain free biodegradable orange trash bags from the state and pick up tools as well. These organizations can arrange times for trash pick-up, the city can deliver the bags, etc. and then pickup the filled litter bags to take to the dump. Signs could be erected by the city along the roadside designating which group is responsible for the litter pick-up. An alternative is to have prisoners in orange suits pick up letter, but this is far from ideal. Guards are necessary with the prisoners and it is too reminiscent of the old chain gangs. Better is voluntary citizen and community involvement in clean streets and highways.
Fossil energy use creates global warming and is becoming scarcer with the economic development of other countries, such as China and India. In the South, we have an abundance of sun power which is greatly underutilized. If we wait for the federal or state governments to promote the use of solar power, we will grow old waiting. In 1973, there was an Arab oil embargo. Are we any more energy independent since 1973? In thirty-five years, what progress have we seen? We can wait no longer. If the federal and state governments cannot act because of special interest opposition, local government must step up to the plate. Building codes should be modified to require greater use of solar power, solar heating, sky lights, and photovoltaic cells to generate some electricity. The city should retrofit buildings to use solar power wherever it is cost effective. The city should give assistance to homeowners and businesses to retrofit for greater solar power usage, and the city should seek federal or state grants to help in this project if they are or become available.
*These photos were taken in a small village outside of Beijing where solar power is used for street lights and heating water for homes.

Wind Power is now becoming another clean fuel alternative.  Small verticle wind turbines will generate electricity with winds 5 mph or higher.  These small turbines are ideal for homes and businesses.  In essence, every rooftop in High Point could be a small, clean producer of electricity using wind turbines and solar panels.

Construct More Sidewalks

Pedestrians should not have to walk on busy streets. This is especially true at night when some wear dark clothes and are virtually unseen until it is too late. Pedestrian use of busy streets is a fatality or serious accident in the making. The city should undertake a prioritized construction program of side walk construction on East/West Chester and Centennial as a N-S major street. At present, there is no sidewalk on College Drive between Centennial and Lexington streets. The result is that High Point University students most often drive to class contributing to pollution and over parking. The sidewalk construction project does not have to be done in a year or even five, but it must start now and continue until the job is done.