How will the additional half-cent sales tax for economic and tourism development work?
Gaston County has many land-development opportunities and a number of business parks. Many of them have been partially developed and much of the land has been sold over the past 10 years. We now need to provide infrastructure improvements to assist in the development of the remaining acreage. This will be critical to ensuring sites are available for recruitment of new companies and to accommodate existing companies that need to expand. The half-cent sales tax will create an eight-year revenue stream that will allow us to address infrastructure needs and a number of major economic development and tourism-related initiatives in the county and in all of our municipalities. Currently there is not enough revenue in the budgets to pay for these items. The only other source of revenue to fund these items would be through an increase in property tax. Gaston County will use its share of the revenue to purchase land for future business park development and assist with infrastructure to complete
