Category Archives: Forsyth County

Krispy Kreme in the Dead Pool

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US News & World Report has a list of 15 companies that stand a good chance of going belly up or at least declaring bankruptcy this year.  Unfortunately for Krispy Kreme they made the list along with Six Flags, Sbarro, Blockbuster, Six Flags and Trump Resorts to name a few.

More happy retailing news from Esbee: Kicks & Grins on Miller Street is shutting down.

Contra Dancing at the Vintage Theater Every Tuesday Night

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D.W. blogs about missing his regular Tuesday night Contra Dancing at the Vintage Theater in Winston-Salem while he was out of town.  He has a little video to share as well.  This caught my eye because I think it's where two of my favorite people met.  D.W. describes the crowd as decidedly "hippy" and that definitely describes the members of my family who met there.

If you're interested in trying it out here's some info:
Vintage Theater
7 Vintage Avenue
Winston-Salem, NC 27127
All Dances are $7 ($5 for full time students under the age of 25)

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Crying Over Spilt Milk

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Did you see the main op-ed pieces in yesterday's (Feb. 8, 2009) Winston-Salem Journal?  Two pieces involving newspaper navel gazing.  One was a piece titled "The Crisis Facing American Newspapers" by a guy at an investment bank that said the following public policy changes need to happen for newspapers to be saved:

  • Allow adjacent newspapers to merge or consolidate (ex. the Winston-Salem Journal could merge with the Yadkin Ripple)
  • Eliminate local media cross ownership restrictions 
  • Allow in-market mergers (ex. The New York Times and The New York Post could merge. Not likely, but potentially highly entertaining to watch). 
  • Grant the industry anti-trust exemption for a limited time 

I have to say that I agree with the basic premise of the first three, but it's the fourth one that cracked me up.  Here's the entire reasoning for the anti-trust exemption:

Newspapers should be granted a finite (36-month) anti-trust law exemption to permit deployment of an industry-wide system to track and charge for re-use of their content. Whether that is accomplished through a "rights society" as with music publishers, or through the use of electronic watermarks, which could facilitate digitized tracking and usage charges, publishers cannot continue the practice of paying for the editorial staffs to source the news and then have it used for free by competing Web aggregators. There are numerous organizations that already have infrastructure in place to serve this purpose. The Associated Press already has existing license fee and "pay-per-click" payment structures.

He's kidding right?  Right when the music industry is abandoning digital rights management because they saw how ineffective it was and how much it ticked off their customers the newspaper industry is going to try virtually the same thing?  I do understand where he's coming from, after all newspaper folks have always felt that TV news wouldn't exist without them.  Still, I have to point out the following:
  • Now that they've let go a huge chunk of their reporters who exactly do they think they are in saying that they are producing the vast chunk of the news?
  • How many newspapers link out to their sources when they get a story from a blog or some other online source?  The answer is very few.  They may cite the source but often it's a generic "a local website" citation that gives almost zero credit to the source.  What's good for the goose, etc., etc.
  • Do they really believe that Google hurts them more than helping them by indexing their site and stories?  If so where's the data to back this up? 
  • Do they really think that adding friction to the flow of information will help them? 

Sadly the newspaper industry is making the same mistake that the music industry made, only 10 years late.  They aren't recognizing the market for what it is.  They aren't realizing that whether or not there's a printed form of journalism is irrelevant.  Paper is a delivery vehicle, same as the airwaves and the internet.  They also need to understand that if they pursue the whole watermark thing all they are going to do is minimize their own exposure and tick off their customers.  What's important for them to understand is that instead of building walls around their news gardens they need to learn how to take their expertise and their (diminishingly) unique place in society and use every tool available to reach their audience.

I've said this ad nauseum: for about a generataion the newspaper's advantage has not resided in the printing press but in the press room.  The one thing they had that no one else did was a stable of people who new their city inside and out, new the players, had the connections, and received the phone calls with the hot inside tip.  Any monkey can type, but professional journalists know what to type.  Whether it's on paper, on a screen, in video or audio, its the what's said or written that's most valuable, not how it's presented.  There will always be people who prefer paper, but there will also be people who hate to read and what their information presenting visually or verbally.  Newspaper companies would be well advised to catch that clue before it's too late.

BTW, what they need to know to succeed in the future can be found here from Lex Alexander.

Volunteers Needed for WSFCS Eggstravaganza

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The Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce sent out an email asking for volunteers for the Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools' annual egg drop competition on February 21.  Volunteers will need to be at Hanes Mall at 8:00 a.m. and the event is scheduled to run until 1:00 p.m.  I might do it just to wear one of the lab coats they provide to all volunteers.

If you're interested just visit the volunteer registration web page and sign up.

Closures and Layoffs in Forsyth County

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Alert reader Peggy emailed me to point me to a page on the North Carolina Employment Security Commission's site that links to a database of permanent layoffs and business closures throughout the state.  The database is a compilation of filings with the state and a survey of published news stories.  While the data isn't definitive (there's a disclaimer on the site stating that the data doesn't meet the Labor Market Information Division's standards for accuracy), but it does provide a good indication of what's going on out there.  I ran the numbers for Forsyth County for all of 2008 and it returned 32 reported closings and 13 layoffs.  What's particularly interesting is that it provides company names, industry, number of people affected, effective date and the reason for the closing/layoff.

I decided to run all of the years between 1998 and 2007 and compare the numbers to 2008. Here's what I found:

Year Closings Layoffs
2008 32 13
2007 31 13
2006 24 4
2005 17 11
2004 32 8
2003 31 5
2002 19 11
2001 16 15
2000 24 6
1999 14 11
1998 12 6

I was a little surprised because I figured that 2008 would have been significantly higher than other recent years due to the recession, but I think the numbers really do highlight that things have been tough around here for a lot longer than they have been in much of the rest of the US.

In the end I found the reasons for closings and layoffs to be starkest reminder of how personal this all is.  Just as poker chips tend to disguise exactly how much money you're actually losing, numbers tend to hide the true emotional impact of all these layoffs. The reasons range from "economic conditions" to "consolidation" to "bankruptcy". Here are some that really hit home to me:
  • Forsyth Medical Center's layoff of 145 people for the stated reason of "outsourcing" in January 2008.    
  • Triad Appliance Center's bankruptcy in December, 2008.  That case received a lot of notoriety because the store's customers were stiffed and the folks at WXII picked it up. But in all the hubaloo about the customers' problems we lost sight of the fact that 18 people lost their jobs.   
  • Reynolds' layoff of 1,700 people in September, 2004 for "restructuring" 
  • Aon Consulting's December, 2006 layoff of 100 people for "outsourcing and restructuring" 
  • Hanesbrands' June, 2007 layoff of  590 for "offshoring production" and August, 2007 layoff of 260 for "restructuring"
  • Circuit City wins the award for harshest sounding reason with their March, 2007 layoff of 15 people for "payroll purge"  I guess they didn't purge the right people huh? 

I could go on and on but you get the picture.   

Phone Trees and TV are So, Like, Old

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I was out last night when the Winston-Salem Forsyth County schools announced today's closure, so my kids called to tell me and to inform me that they were planning on staying up to the wee hours to celebrate.  When I asked them how they heard about the closing they said they'd gotten a text alert from their school's Facebook account.  How very 2009, huh?

When I looked for the West Forsyth account and tried to "friend" it I found that it was moderated, which means they have to approve me as a "friend" in order to see the West Forsyth page.  That's good to know.  I asked the kids if it was an official school page and they said they thought so.  If it's not an official school account then someone could send out bogus info, say a false school closing, but if it is real then my hat goes off to the school for reaching the kids where they live.

When I was looking at this I also saw that the West Forsyth administrator also created a weather info group for all of Winston-Salem Forsyth County schools which is public.  Another good idea.

BTW, I hate to say I told you so.

Update on the Big Eat

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A quick update to the Big Eat page. Somehow I'd missed Camel City and someone pointed out that I had and they emailed me to ask to be added.  Of course I'm happy to do so and I've updated the page accordingly.  I've re-pasted the Google Map with all the Big Eat location below.  FYI here's Camel City's info:

Address: 401 W. Fourth Street
Phone: 734-1797

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Prediction: At Least a 2 Hour Delay Announced by 11 Tonight

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Given that we live in North Carolina and that we have a school system that once called off school due to a forecast of snow and stuck to it when the snow didn't appear, and that we have a forecast of 1-3 inches of snow, I'm predicting that we'll have a minimum of a two hour delay announced by the time the news airs at 11 tonight.  If we see any precipitation before then I'm guessing we'll have a full-blown cancelation by 11.

Now back to your regular programming.  

Homeschool Nation – North Carolina, Blog by Local Homeschooler

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There appears to be a new blog for homeschoolers here in the Triad. Actually, upon further review it looks like it's just new to me.  Anyway, Homeschool Nation – North Carolina has posts about homeschoolers' drivers ed (available for free to homeschoolers in Forsyth County at their local high schools), field trip ideas and a link to a Fox8 feature about the homeschoolers' football team among other things.  Looks like lots of good information for local homeschoolers.

Forsyth County’s $8 Million Hole? Property Tax Rates on the Way Up?

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According to this short item on DigTriad Forsyth County is facing an $8 million budget shortage, mainly from lower than expected sales tax revenue.  The same item states that Mecklenburg County is looking at a $90 million deficit and Wake County a $23 million deficit, but no word on Guilford County. 

I looked on the county site and found a PDF with some budget projections. (Please keep in mind that it appears the county's documents that I'm referring to were prepared last year, which means before the economic carnage of Fall 08 and early 09).  If you look at the sales tax line you see it moving in a downward direction from $71.4 million in FY08, to $65.7 million FY09 and $54.7 million projected for FY10.  FY11 looks even worse with a projection for $52.1 million.  So if I'm reading that right Forsyth County expects its sales tax revenue to fall almost $20 million, or about 27% between now and 2011.  In a separate PDF that contains a description of the assumptions the county used to come up with the numbers they note that some of the sales tax decline has to do with Winston-Salem's annexation of certain county property and a sales tax/Medicaid swap with the state. I'm imagining that these numbers are going to head down with the economy.

The budget projections also show Forsyth County's property tax revenue at $208.3 million for FY08, $221 million for FY09, $238.8 million for FY10 and $250.5 million in FY11.  That means the county expects property tax revenue to climb $42.2 million or 20% between now and 2011.  With property values going through the floor and almost nothing new being built I wonder how they are predicting such an increase in property tax revenue.  Can we say rate increase?  

If you look just below revenue you see that they have two lines for property tax rates.  One is labeled "Property Tax Rate Without CIP" and shows the following rates: FY08 – 69.6, FY09 – 72.2, FY10 – 70.4, and FY11 – 72.  Below that line is "Additional Cents to Fund CIP" which shows the following: FY08 – 0, FY09 – 0.1, FY10 – 2.3, FY11 – 3.4.  So if you add them together the property tax rates are:
  • FY08 – 69.6
  • FY09 – 72.3 
  • FY10 – 72.7 
  • FY11 – 75.4 

Now these are projections so I'd expect that they'll change over time depending on how real estate performs in the future.  For instance if property value continues to plummet you might see a rate in 2010 that is 76 rather than 72.7 so that the county can meet its funding needs.  In fact their assumptions provide a paragraph for how they come up with the property tax rate:

Current Year Property Taxes – Tax revenue on real and personal property. The amount
required each year is determined by taking the difference between projected expenditures, less
the total of all other revenues and appropriated fund balance. The tax rate is then determined by taking this amount, and dividing it by the amount per penny the tax base supports.

In other words, if they need the money their coming to us to get it.

Of course the other half of the budget is expenditures and they will likely cut those to try and avoid higher taxes.  You can see the projections for expenditures in the same report, and they are broken down into broad categories like "social services" and "education".  Obviously there's a lot to debate on where to cut and how much, and honestly that's a whole separate piece that needs to be explored, but for the purposes of this piece let's just say that even with the cuts I think we can all expect a rather hefty property tax increase over the next couple of years.