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Faith Driven Consumer™: Statement on Indiana Religious Freedom Controversy

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RALEIGH, N.C., March 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Faith Driven Consumer™ — the consumer advocacy organization representing 41 million Christian consumers who spend $2 trillion annually, has issued a statement by founder Chris Stone regarding the controversy surrounding legislation in the State of Indiana:

“We are disappointed by the misleading and inflammatory nature of many people’s comments in reaction to recent events surrounding Indiana’s religious freedom law. Such language presents an obstacle to the important issue of achieving universal equality in our culture and in the marketplace. Our multicultural and pluralistic society highly values diversity, and extols respect and tolerance, even for those who hold differing viewpoints. As a nation, we must progress toward a solution that works for everyone.

“As Faith Driven Consumers, God calls on us to love everyone. He does not call us to embrace all beliefs or actions, especially those in conflict with our deeply held religious beliefs. And as Christians, we cannot deny God’s biblical truths, but we support solutions that protect the LGBT community and people of faith equally. We love our fellow citizens without reservation, all while declining to participate in the celebration of beliefs that violate our deeply held religious beliefs and conscience—legally without fear of prosecution and persecution. Likewise, others can opt out of the celebration of our faith under the same parameters.  

“Our goal is not exclusion, but rather inclusion. We seek to build a culture where everyone is afforded a safe place in the marketplace. Corporate America has led the charge demanding equality for our LGBT citizens—expanding the definition of diversity to many groups in recent years. We now call upon them, alongside our elected leaders, to seize this incredible opportunity to advocate for a new paradigm of equality. By pursuing equal protections for everyone—respecting that those with differing viewpoints can coexist while retaining the right to exercise and express their convictions—we can create an environment where the needs of all consumers are met. Everyone deserves to be treated with fairness and dignity, including people of faith.

“In the coming days and weeks, we will work with corporate leaders and others to ensure that all are welcomed and included in our marketplace’s rich rainbow of diversity.”

About Faith Driven Consumer

Faith Driven Consumer is a movement connecting Christian consumers with companies that are relatively more compatible with a biblical worldview. By educating and engaging Christian consumers, Faith Driven Consumer provides a community forum offering resources for making more faith-conscious decisions, encourages companies to meet the unique needs of Faith Driven Consumers, and offers a national voice for this rapidly emerging, economically powerful market segment. Visit http://www.faithdrivenconsumer.com for more information. 

Contact: Matthew Faraci
Office: (919) 645-0771
Email: matthew@faithdrivenconsumer.com

SOURCE Faith Driven Consumer

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http://www.faithdrivenconsumer.com

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Gamecocks add two football commitments during weekend

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South Carolina added two football commitments, including the Gamecocks’ first in-state pledge for the 2016 class, on Saturday during its junior day.

Conway wide receiver Bryan Edwards (6-3, 208) had USC and Georgia at the top of his list before Saturday, but saw enough on junior day to commit to the Gamecocks. Edwards, who is regarded as one of the state’s top prospects for the 2016 recruiting class, also had offers from Clemson, Virginia Tech, Florida, Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, Wake Forest and California.

Edwards said he likes the idea of being part of Steve Spurrier’s offense.


“They spread the ball around,” he said. “They share the wealth. I feel like if I can make plays I can fit in any offense. Coach Spurrier is a great coach and he’s turned that program up.”

Edwards is the second receiver for USC’s 2016 class, joining Kyle Davis of Lawrenceville, Ga.

Running back CJ Freeman (5-11, 190) of Greensboro, N.C., had a recent conversation with former USC star running back Marcus Lattimore, and that really got him thinking seriously about joining the Gamecocks. Freeman took the next step on Saturday during the junior day by committing to USC in the hopes of becoming that next great USC running back.

Freeman has rushed for 3,800 yards and 48 touchdowns the past two seasons and led his team to state championships under the direction of former Hartsville and Lancaster coach Johnny Roscoe. Freeman came to USC’s first junior day in January and always had the Gamecocks high on his list. He also strongly considered Virginia Tech and had offers as well from West Virginia, Wake Forest and Washington State. The Gamecocks now have five commitments for the 2016 class.

In other recruiting news:

Goose Creek defensive end Javon Kinlaw has had USC at the top of his list since the Gamecocks were the first to offer him in August 2014. And he went to the junior day thinking he might be ready to commit. But that didn’t happen Saturday, and Kinlaw says no commitment is coming from him anytime soon.

“I’m putting things on hold for a while,” said Kinlaw, who added that he didn’t get the feeling from the Gamecocks they were ready to accept a commitment from him. “Everything was nice talking about the brand new facilities and stuff like that. I just love it up there. It’s great. I just feel like I’m not ready yet.”

Kinlaw met with his recruiter Steve Spurrier Jr. and defensive line coach Deke Adams but did not talk with Steve Spurrier, Jon Hoke or Lorenzo Ward. Despite not making a pledge Saturday, Kinlaw said he’s still favoring the Gamecocks strongly over the rest of the field. He also has offers from Clemson, Alabama, Florida, Louisville, East Carolina, Florida State and Auburn. Clemson, Florida and Florida State are three others that have stood out to Kinlaw.

Clemson picked up its second commitment from the IMG Academy football program when linebacker Rahshaun Smith (6-3, 230) announced his plans last week to join teammate TJ Chase, a wide receiver, with the Tigers. Smith attends the school in Bradenton, Fla., but he lives in Baltimore.

Smith chose the Tigers from more than 40 offers. He also had Oklahoma, Maryland, Penn State and Ohio State high on his final list. Clemson moved into a strong position with Smith after he first attended a camp last summer, then went to a game last season, and finally attended the junior day in late January. Smith is the eighth commitment for the Tigers’ 2016 class and the second linebacker.  

Linebacker Brandon Hill of Heathwood Hall committed to Duke on Sunday. Hill had accumulated an impressive offer list that also included Clemson, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Yale, Pittsburgh, Georgia, Tennessee and Notre Dame. He also had been talking with USC. Hill is the fifth Palmetto State prospect for the 2016 class to commit to an out-of-state program. Hanahan wide receiver Samuel Denmark and Greer defensive back Troy Pride are committed to Virginia Tech, Lake Marion defensive back James Valdez is committed to N.C. State and Dutch Fork defensive back Stephen Davis Jr. is committed to Auburn.

Offensive lineman Will Fries (6-6, 280) of Cranford, N.J., will hit the recruiting trail early next month. Fries will visit Northwestern on April 3-4 and then will head south to see Clemson on April 6 and USC the following day. Fries said his mom will join him on the visits to Clemson and USC. He has already seen Penn State, Rutgers, Syracuse, Duke and Virginia.

Linebacker TJ Brunson of Richland Northeast has been a regular at USC’s practices this spring and was on the sideline Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium for the Gamecocks’ first full scrimmage of spring. Brunson was prepared to commit to the Gamecocks earlier this month but held off doing so because USC wants to see how healthy his hip is after having arthroscopic surgery. In the interim, Brunson said he’s been hearing regularly from Gamecocks recruiters Spurrier Jr., Kirk Botkin and Ward.

“The offer is still good and they are going to wait until my senior year to evaluate some film and make sure I can still play,” said Brunson, who recorded 134 tackles last season. “They are still up there but not committing until I get to make sure I’m 100 percent.”

Brunson said he will also attend USC’s spring game April 11.

Former Kansas safety Isaiah Johnson said his decision on a new school will come from between USC and Louisville. Wake Forest was a third program under consideration, but Johnson said he’s now down to the Gamecocks and Cardinals. He will make his official visit to USC on April 11 and will go to Louisville the following weekend.

Johnson, who is from Cary, N.C., said his parents will come down to Columbia to join him for his official visit with the Gamecocks. Johnson said there’s no favorite between the finalists, and the visits will tell the tale. He will enroll as a graduate student at his new school and will be eligible immediately.

Clemson is in touch with linebacker Garrett Hooker of Thomasville, N.C., but has not yet offered. Hooker said the Tigers invited him to their junior day earlier this month but he couldn’t make it. He’s now looking at a possible visit there for the spring game. He has offers from Wake Forest, Duke, N.C. State and Virginia Tech.

DL Rashan Gary of Paramus, N.J., plans to visit USC on Thursday. The national recruit is also expected to see Clemson while he’s in the state. He has family ties to the state.

Clemson OL target Parker Boudreaux of Orlando, Fla., visited Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi State and Mississippi last week. He has upcoming visits set with Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Notre Dame.

Fort Dorchester OL John Simpson visited Mississippi State and Alabama over the weekend.

USC offered Laurens DB Thomas Jones while he was in for the junior day Saturday. He also has offers from Duke, Charlotte and Miami of Ohio.

The Gamecocks also offered RB Tre Harbison of Shelby, N.C., who also was in for junior day. He also has offers from North Carolina, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Virginia, East Carolina, Boston College and N.C. State.

Barnwell RB Shakur Chisolm plans to visit Clemson on April 6 with his cousin, 2017 DB D’Najee Whosendove of Allendale-Fairfax.

Blythewood DB Khris Pam is planning to visit Michigan State and Wake Forest and to go to Clemson’s spring game.

Clemson offered DB Kareem Felder Jr. of Baltimore, who is a Virginia Tech commitment.

USC offered OL Jauan Williams of Washington, D.C. He also has a Clemson offer.

RB Tyrek Tisdale of Orlando, who at one time was favoring USC, committed to Florida over the weekend.

Saluda coach Stewart Young reports he has a pair of prospects for the 2016 class. OL Cortez Herrin (6-4 320) is going to visit Furman this Saturday. He’s also hearing from Georgia Southern and is also getting interest from Coastal Carolina. And DB/WR Jamarion Mathis (6-2 185) has been offered by Miami of Ohio. He’s also heard from Kentucky, N.C. State and Louisville. He was the team’s leading receiver last season and is a three-year starter.

Young said he has a junior running back in Malik Brooks (5-10 185) who he expects to develop into a prospect. He missed all of last season after breaking his wrist in the opening game but he rushed for over 600 yards as a freshman.

USC has had a strong recruiting presence in the Stone Mountain area of metro Atlanta, and that will continue into the 2017 recruiting season. ATH Carlito Gonzalez (6-2, 190) of Stephenson High, who the Gamecocks view as a safety, is very strong on USC at this point and is thinking about committing when he visits later this month. “I’m close (on committing) but there some things I want to find out, like what safeties and receivers are being recruited, and see where I fit in,” Gonzalez said. “I really like South Carolina since they were my first offer. They are looking real good in my eyes right now.” Working in the Gamecocks’ favor is the presence of 2015 signee DJ Neal, who is a teammate and close friend of Gonzalez. “He’s always whispering stuff in my ear,” said Gonzalez. “I’d say the chance on committing is 50-50.” Gonzalez said there are several things about the USC program he likes that have moved him close to a pledge. “I like the excitement that I’ve seen from watching the games,” he said. “Them being my first offer. They are getting players into the league. And it’s close to home. I’m thinking about committing. I really like the school, but I don’t know. But as of now, I’m very interested in the school and they are very interested in me. I’m just looking forward to finding out different information.” Gonzalez said he hopes to visit USC within the next two weeks.  Kentucky is his only other offer at this point, but he’s also hearing from Clemson, Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee and Michigan State. Last season at free safety Gonzalez had 30 tackles with 2 interceptions and 2 forced fumbles.

USC is the first to offer 2017 OL Cesar Ruiz of Camden, N.J., and the first to offer eighth grader Dominick Blaylock of Atlanta, the son of former NBA star Mookie Blaylock. Blaylock attended USC’s junior day Saturday when Steve Spurrier and GA Mangus made the offer. He attends Dickerson Middle School, which feeds into Walton High School.

Basketball

Jamall Gregory of Washington, D.C., made an official visit to USC over the weekend with his mother and said he plans to decide between the Gamecocks and Kansas State later this week. He has not yet visited Kansas State. Gregory was not prepared to declare a public favorite Sunday after his visit to Columbia, but he made it clear he fully enjoyed his time checking out the campus and the program.

Gregory also has offers from DePaul, Canisius, Florida Gulf Coast, Rutgers and Minnesota. He averaged 15 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists per game this past season for his prep school in Delray Beach, Fla.

Jaren Sina, the former Seton Hall guard who is looking for a new basketball home, also made an official visit to USC over the weekend. Sina also has Michigan, Boston College, Stanford, Rhode Island, George Washington and Binghamton on his list. His sister plays for Binghamton and he has taken an official visit there.

The USC basketball coaching staff has been recruiting 7-0 center Conor Clifford of Saddleback JC in California since December and is one of two schools set for an official visit at this point, according to his coach. Clifford visited Washington State this weekend and will also take an official with the Gamecocks at some point, coach Andy Ground said Thursday.

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Cycle North Carolina sets route across the state

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Although Cycle North Carolina won’t be riding through uptown Shelby until September, Cleveland County Chamber officials are already making plans to welcome the large group.

“This brought 1,200 bicyclists through our town for an overnight stay two years ago,” said Jackie Sibley, vice president of tourism at the Cleveland County Chamber. “The economic impact was close to $50,000 in local spending during that overnight stay.”

In 2012, cyclists from Florida, Kansas, Texas and even Switzerland spent the night in the gym at Shelby City Park.

The 2015 Cycle North Carolina “Mountains to Coast” route was announced earlier in March by Wit Tuttell, executive director of Visit NC.

The 17th annual ride is scheduled from Sept. 26 to Oct. 3 for a Waynesville to Oak Island route. Over the course of the week, riders will bike an average of 60 miles per day. Additional overnight stays are planned for the towns of Hendersonville, Concord, Southern Pines, Lumberton and Whiteville.

The Cycle North Carolina “Mountains to Coast” ride is the state’s only fully supported ride, created in 1999 with the N.C. Division of Tourism, Capital Broadcasting Company, the N.C. Department of Transportation and North Carolina Amateur Sports as founding partners.

Cycle North Carolina was developed to promote North Carolina’s scenic beauty, heritage tourism, visitor attractions, historic sites, state parks, fitness, healthy lifestyles and the benefits of bicycling to individuals. During the past 17 years, Cycle North Carolina has stopped overnight in more than 100 North Carolina towns and visited nearly 700 North Carolina communities.

Registration brochures are available and online registration is open at www.CycleNorthCarolina.org. Cycle North Carolina will be capping registration at 1,100 riders, so interested riders are encouraged to register early.

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Hotel Aiken revitalization a dream for years

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Interim City Manager Roger LeDuc at first thought the chances of revitalizing Hotel Aiken and adding a public parking garage would be slim.

“When (local hotel owner) Neel Shah and I first started talking about it, it was just kind of a dream,” LeDuc said. “(We thought) that would be really great.”

Three to four months later, after beginning discussions with Shah in December, plans are in place to bring one of the largest public-private partnerships to the City of Aiken.

City staff, alongside Shah, confirmed in a City Council work session last week Shah’s plans to gut and renovate Hotel Aiken, 235 Richland Ave. W., which is currently owned by his father, and possibly turn the old hotel into a Marriott.

City staff looked at similar construction in other areas around South Carolina, which included the Project Jackson expansion in North Augusta, Summerville, Myrtle Beach, Anderson and Sumter.

“We’re excited about this revitalization in downtown Aiken, and we’re looking forward to making it happen,” Shah told the Aiken Standard.

Hotel Aiken was built in 1898 and was last renovated in 2011, according to the hotel’s website. If proposed conceptual renderings go forward, the 65-room hotel would expand to 80-85 rooms. Renderings were provided to the Aiken Standard of what the hotel will look like after its revitalization.

Hotel Aiken’s main building will stay at three floors, despite earlier reports, and a six-floor addition will be constructed on the hotel’s Newberry Street side, which includes queen- and king-size rooms, a dining area and possible exercise room on the bottom floor. The hotel’s addition will include a walkway from the addition to the main hotel.

The City does have rules against constructing a building higher than about 50 feet; however the City is looking to change that rule, LeDuc said.

“We’ve been considering increasing the height (of buildings) for the downtown for some time,” LeDuc told the Aiken Standard. “Basically, because when the height was first stated at 50 feet, that’s back when we had a ladder truck that only went 50 feet; and now we have ladder trucks that go up to 100 feet. Regardless of the hotel, we’ve gone to the Planning Commission to put a 65- to- 70-foot height limit (on buildings).”

Major construction of that property would also include a public parking deck, connected to the hotel by a walkway, with the potential for retail space on the bottom floor. The public parking deck will be constructed on the left side of Bee Lane where currently Hotel Aiken has several motel rooms. Those will be torn down to make way for the $2.5 million to $3 million parking deck, which will be paid 100 percent by the City. If the parking deck has more than 100 parking spaces, the City is discussing whether to take away three to four parking spaces in front of the hotel to build a pick-up and drop-off area.

The public will be allowed to park in the deck for free; a surcharge would be added onto the hotel guest’s bill, developed by the City, to park in the deck.

Council is in the midst of discussing whether to approve a one percent hospitality tax for the City of Aiken, which brings the potential to add $1.2 million per year dedicated to tourism-related projects. The one cent hospitality tax is added onto a customer’s bill after they purchase food or a beverage from an establishment. The first reading of that vote will be held Monday, April 27.

If Council passes the hospitality tax, LeDuc said, staff think at least $600,000 would come into the City during the next fiscal budget year, beginning July 1. A partial amount of those collected funds, LeDuc said, would go toward constructing the parking deck. Staff hope to have the parking deck paid off within seven years.

“We want to keep the historic aspect. … The outside of the garage will have a feature (where) you can’t tell it’s a garage,” LeDuc said. “It’ll look like more of an office building.”

Currently, City staff are collecting developer’s agreements from other area cities to see how other areas partnered with private companies. LeDuc said Shah is doing something similar, so within the next couple of months, the agreement can come to a Council vote.

“That’s one path,” LeDuc said. “The second path is then to determine the funding source for the garage. And on the (April) 13th, we will be discussing and having first reading of the hospitality tax, which takes two readings.”

At that meeting, LeDuc said, staff will “lay out” for Council what the City intends to use the hospitality tax funds for.

“So it’s very clear what they, the Council and the citizens, would receive if we institute it,” LeDuc said. “It’s not just going into a black hole. It’ll be very clear, and again … the we way we do budgeting (for the hospitality tax), we cannot by state law use these funds to do economic development – that’s not allowed. You can use them for tourism-related projects.”

Using those funds collected by the hospitality tax would “free up” dollars in the general fund, LeDuc said, which are usually pulled to fund tourism-related projects.

The Aiken Standard reached out to Shah who said at some point an announcement will be made with more concrete plans.

Maayan Schechter is the local government reporter with Aiken Standard. An Atlanta native, she has a mass communications-journalism degree with the University of North Carolina Asheville. Follow her on Twitter @MaayanSchechter.

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What restoring oysters would mean for NC’s economy, environment

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Earlier this month more than 200 people gathered in Raleigh for an Oyster Summit organized by the N.C. Coastal Federation to share information necessary to develop an action plan for restoring and sustaining North Carolina’s oysters. Participants, including fishermen, scientists, local and state government leaders and oyster enthusiasts, recognized that revitalizing the oyster resource would simultaneously enhance estuarine health and the state’s economy.

Annual oyster landings data from the late 1880s show how productive our coastal waters were for growing oysters. By the turn of the 20th century, oysters continued to provide a lucrative fishery with nearly a million bushels harvested each year. Since the 1902 peak in landings, the oyster population has been in a steep decline due to a confluence of factors – overharvesting, degradation of oyster reef habitat and mortality caused by the introduction of nonnative disease organisms. This oyster population decline, along with pollution-driven closures of shellfish waters, has led to harvest levels over the past 50 years remaining below 10 percent of historic highs.

For 20 years, North Carolina has actively committed to reversing this trend. Blue ribbon advisory panels have been convened to guide oyster revitalization, and tens of millions of dollars have been invested in oyster research, habitat repair and protection, and increased oyster cultivation. Despite progress and lessons learned, the job is not done.

North Carolinians are well-acquainted with the culinary delights offered by oysters. What is not yet so widely appreciated are the substantial and varied environmental benefits they provide.

Recent breakthroughs in oyster research, made largely by researchers at the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences and their collaborators, quantify magnitudes and estimate economic values of “ecosystem services” provided by shallow-water oysters and the reef habitats they create. These services and their annual value per acre of reef include providing reef habitat that augments production of many commercially valuable fishery species, such as red drum and blue crab ($1,669); stabilizing shorelines and protecting waterfront property from storm damage ($348, assuming only 1 percent of oyster reefs are located where property needs protection); clarifying estuarine waters via filtration, thereby promoting growth of seagrass meadows, the home of bay scallops, delicious shrimp and many valuable finfishes ($523); and reducing nitrogen pollution in estuaries, the cause of nuisance algal blooms and fish kills ($1,640).

These four processes associated with shallow-water oyster reefs provide total annual ecosystem benefits of $4,180 per acre, much more the $356 value of oysters harvested annually off an acre of today’s degraded reefs.

To complement results from shallow-water reefs, analogous field measurements were extended to a newly created larger, deep-water reef in Pamlico Sound: the 18.6-acre Crab Hole oyster sanctuary. This created oyster reef stimulates a higher rate of nitrogen removal per acre than the shallow-water reefs and serves as a target area for valuable recreational fishing, another quantifiable ecosystem service.

However, Crab Hole does not protect the shoreline because of its great distance from shore. Scaling up ecosystem services of this deeper-water oyster reef illustrates dollar values for a larger project projected over longer time frames: The Crab Hole reef yields a total of $973,000 in environmental benefits if the reef lasts only five years and progressively much more if it lasts longer.

Some state leaders in Raleigh recognize the benefits of oyster restoration and understand that an expanded oyster population grows local economies on the coast, while also enhancing the environment and seafood availability. All benefits are intertwined when it comes to oyster reef restoration and likewise oyster aquaculture. Oysters represent natural capital, returning dividends in the form of valuable services to the environment and to people. A bill has been introduced in the General Assembly that is intended to continue successful oyster restoration efforts and jumpstart other innovative initiatives.

This issue has significant statewide implications for tourism, environmental protection and targeted economic development. If the discussion and planning that took place at the Oyster Summit can be implemented, North Carolina’s oyster population may once again flourish under conditions of a recharged coastal and statewide economy.

Dr. Charles “Pete” Peterson, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences, served two terms on the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission.

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Charlotte, state legislature differ on sales tax impact

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The city of Charlotte has feared a sales tax reform could cause it to lose nearly $30 million a year. But a recent state analysis shows the impact to the city would be only $2.6 million a year.

It’s unclear whose analysis is correct – the city of Charlotte’s estimate from January or the legislature’s nonpartisan Fiscal Research Division projection from March 25. It’s also unclear why the difference in the two estimates is so large.

Local sales tax revenues today are mostly distributed on a “point of sale” basis, which benefits cities with large shopping centers or tourist areas.

A legislative proposal would scrap that allocation and distribute all local sales tax dollars based on population.

▪ In January, as Charlotte was starting its budget process, the city estimated that if the sales tax change was enacted, Charlotte would lose almost $30 million each year.

▪ The city estimated Mecklenburg County government and county towns would lose $62 million each year.

There appears to be some agreement on that projection.

The state estimated county government would lose $67.8 million, while the county towns would gain about $4.2 million.

The loss of nearly $68 million represents nearly 32 percent of the sales tax revenue the county is expected to receive in 2018.

If enacted, that would probably result in cuts to schools, parks and social services, which are funded by the county.

Charlotte’s chief financial officer, Randy Harrington, said he couldn’t comment further on the issue because the city is still analyzing the proposed legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown, a Jacksonville Republican, supports changing the current distribution formula. He has said it has created “two North Carolinas” – prosperous cities and poor rural counties.

Under the plan he supports, the city of Jacksonville would see a nearly 17 percent jump in sales tax revenue. The plan would phase in the sales tax changes over three years.

The state estimates show that some cities would suffer huge financial losses.

Asheville would lose 20 percent of its sales tax dollars. Fayetteville would lose 18 percent. Greensboro’s sales tax would drop 16 percent. Raleigh would lose more than 23 percent.

Some municipalities on the coast – which depend on tourism – would lose much more.

On Friday, Brown said those projections represent unintended consequences of his bill, and he plans to make changes to ensure that cities and towns see revenue changes that largely mirror their counties.

“I think there will be very little if any impact to the cities” in the final legislation, he said. “This is a complicated major bill that’s going to take a lot of work.”

State Sen. Bob Rucho, a Matthews Republican, introduced a competing bill Thursday that would also distribute sales taxes based on population. His bill, however, would have a “hold harmless” provision, which would keep county sales tax funding at 2013-2014 levels.

Republican County Commissioner Bill James said the county is studying the Brown and Rucho bills to determine the impact.

“The real question is whether urban counties should subsidize rural ones,” James said in an email. “I find the Democrats position against this ironic considering the amount of wealth redistribution they engage in at the City level – taking from suburbia and handing it off to the inner-city.”

Gaston County Manager Earl Mathers said he needed to study the proposal further before deciding if it was good policy.

Gaston County would see a 9 percent increase in sales tax dollars, and most of the county’s municipalities would see more money.

“We have some leakage to Charlotte,” he said of Gaston residents who shop and eat in Mecklenburg County. “It would have a significant impact there.”

Mecklenburg’s towns would either receive more sales tax revenue or break even, according to the report.

The only exception is Pineville, which would lose about $263,000, or nearly 18 percent of its sales tax revenue. Pineville benefits from having Carolina Place Mall in its town boundaries, but under the proposed plan, that advantage would end.

Charlotte is struggling to balance its budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins in July. The city lost $18.1 million when the Business Privilege License tax was repealed. Charlotte also expects to lose $14 million for the upcoming year due to property values that are lower than expected after the recently completed revaluation.

Reporter Colin Campbell of the (Raleigh) News Observer contributed.

Harrison: 704-358-5160

Tax proposal’s impact in Mecklenburg

The legislature’s nonpartisan Fiscal Research Division released a report this week showing the impact of changing how sales taxes are distributed. Here is how Mecklenburg County and its municipalities would fare:

Mecklenburg County -$67.8 million (-32%)

Charlotte -$2.2 million (-2%)

Cornelius +$324,000 (+9%)

Davidson +$5,500 (+.3%)

Huntersville +$1.9 million (+34%)

Matthews +$932,000 (+27%)

Mint Hill +$1.34 million (+58%)

Pineville -$263,000 (-18%)

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McColl Center artist Robert Karimi uses food to draw in audiences

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Susan Sontag’s quote “Real art has the capacity to make us nervous” hangs on the wall in the basement at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation on North Tryon Street.

You have to wonder if knives, paper hats and sriracha-flavored Cheerios were what she had in mind.

McColl Center artist-in-residence Robert Karimi would probably say yes. The 60 or so people milling around in the center’s basement on a bitterly cold Thursday night seemed a little nervous at first, but they were game for Karimi’s event “Chops + Chopped,” a special evening of food and poetry.

Karimi is spending a couple of months in Charlotte doing a variety of things to get people talking about eating and eating while talking.

“All the work I do is participatory,” Karimi says. “I call myself an experience designer. What I’m trying to get people to do is exchange wisdom with each other. My art form is part community engagement, part performance and part design.”

Sometimes, Karimi brings people into his studio to make lunch. Sometimes, he organizes bike trips.

On Thursday night, Karimi’s design involved a lot of things. There was Karimi himself, wearing a red chef’s jacket, shorts and knee-high bee-hive socks and reciting poetry based on food jingles. There were four volunteer chefs, who kept things moving, kept fingers uncut and kept things cleaned up.

There were six long tables, where people put on paper hats and split into teams of friends and strangers. They were given 10 minutes to collectively create a dish from ingredient lists that read like a college student’s dietary nightmare. One involved broccoli, asparagus, tabbouleh, black beans, fresh lychees, cotija cheese, spinach, chipotle peppers, sesame oil and balsamic vinegar.

There was a Poet’s Corner where the non-cooks wrote poems that involved lots of colored pens and food metaphors. There were two real poets, Hannah Hasan and CarlosAlexis Cruz, reading poems such as “Safe Place” and “I Hate the World,” which involved a windup toy cockroach.

There was chaos. And spills. But sometimes, you have to let art flow over you, even if it’s balsamic vinegar flowing over a tablecloth.

There was also creation, if you include a surprisingly tasty dressing of tofu, beer, fenugreek and a serrano pepper that one team whipped up in a blender.

Katelyn Greer, 16, wore a GoPro video camera on her head while she chopped. Katelyn, from Sherrill’s Ford, came with her whole family – her father, David, her mother, Nicole, and her brother, Kent, 21, who drove down from Boone, where he goes to Appalachian State University. (It wasn’t a hard decision, he said: “It was negative 12 up there this morning.”)

Finally, there was competition, which is certainly an art form in American life. The winning team really rose to the challenge with the dessert round, which had to include sriracha, tahini (sesame seed paste), Greek yogurt, Cheerios, garbanzo beans, flour tortillas, graham cracker crumbs, sugar, coconut and a cucumber.

Their creation: Hot Sugar Cheesecake Parfait, with a bottom layer of Cheerios tossed with sriracha and sugar. That part was so tasty that volunteer chef Lena Halabi, who is visiting from Minneapolis, said she would take the idea with her when she goes back to work.

It’s not an empty threat, people. Halabi works for General Mills in Minnesota. Sriracha-frosted cereal could be in your future.

OK, now you can get nervous.

Purvis: 704-358-5236

More events with Robert Karimi

▪ Viva La Bicycle Parade + Progressive Food Party, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Feb. 28: Karimi leads food-related discussions and activities followed by a bicycle ride around uptown. Includes food samples and nutrition information.

▪ Viva La Cook Triple Crown Grill Off + Food Wisdom Day, 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. March 7. Includes a barbecue contest and audience participation to make and discuss family dishes.

Details: Location: 7th Street Public Market. www.mccollcenter.org, 704-332-5535.

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Motor sports: Denny Hamlin wins at Martinsville, virtually assures a spot in …

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Denny Hamlin just needed a visit to Martinsville Speedway to get his racing team back on track.

Now, with his spot in NASCAR’s Chase for the championship virtually assured, they can work to make it better.

Hamlin passed teammate Matt Kenseth for the lead with 28 laps to go Sunday and ended Toyota’s 32-race winless streak in the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia. It was his fifth victory on NASCAR’s oldest, smallest circuit.

“We had a very fast car, but obviously some pit road issues, but we overcame it,” Hamlin said after his 25th career victory, which was helped along by a serious blunder that took four-time champion Jeff Gordon out of contention late.

Hamlin’s pit crew, unlike Gordon, made their mistake early enough in the race to recover. Before the event was 200 laps old, Hamlin was penalized when his crew failed to control a tire on pit road. It dropped him from the lead to 22nd place.

He was back in the top 10 by the midpoint, and stalking the leaders shortly thereafter.

Hamlin also held off a five-lap, bumper-to-tail challenge from Brad Keselowski at the finish. There was some bumping and nudging, and a big wiggle for Hamlin in the final fourth turn, but Keselowski never caused him to spin.

The race was run without reigning rookie of the year Kyle Larson, who watched from a North Carolina hospital where he was undergoing testing after fainting at an autograph session on Saturday. Regan Smith drove in his absence, finishing 16th.

Keselowski was second, followed by Joey Logano, Kenseth and David Ragan, giving Joe Gibbs Racing three cars in the top five. The jolt was especially appreciated in a week when the team announced that President J.D. Gibbs is being treated for “symptoms impacting areas of brain function.”

Gordon, an eight-time Martinsville winner, took the lead for the first time with 58 laps to go and then got caught entering pit road too fast when the 16th and final caution came out with about 40 laps to go. The mistake put him well back in the field, and while he rallied to finish ninth, was left disappointed.

IndyCar: There was never a doubt that Team Penske would win the IndyCar Series opener in St. Petersburg, Florida. The four Penske drivers led every on-track session through the streets of St. Petersburg and qualified 1-2-3-4. The only question was which Penske driver would end the weekend celebrating in victory lane. Juan Pablo Montoya wasn’t anyone’s first pick. Yet the Colombian pulled it off, when he grabbed the lead from teammate Will Power during green-flag pit stops, then slammed the door closed on Power’s lone attempt to get back to the front.

Montoya won his second race since his return last season to IndyCar.

NHRA: Jack Beckman topped the Funny Car field in the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Concord, North Carolina, to end a 54-event winless streak.

Formula One: Fears that Mercedes would dominate the 2015 Formula One season were swept aside in a flash of Ferrari red as a tearful Sebastian Vettel won the Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang and announced himself as a genuine title contender.

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Forget The Pinot, Pass The Porter: In California’s Wine Country, Beer Tours …

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I jumped in my car early one recent Sunday morning. My destination: Ventura, California, a picturesque tourist town on the California coast, a major destination for city day trippers. But I wasn’t out for a wine-sniffing spin at the region’s many vineyards. No, I was driving an hour and a half from my Los Angeles home to sip something else entirely: beer.

Ventura is the proverbial drinking town with a surfing problem. On the furthest edges of California’s wine country (the territory made famous in movies like Sideways and a thousand PBS travel shows), Ventura and the upcoast town of Santa Barbara make considerable trade from Los Angelenos coming to sample wine on weekends. In downtown Santa Barbara alone, more than 20 wineries offer tasting rooms; the much smaller town of Ventura is home to more than a dozen as well.

My destination was a tour bus was parked outside the Ventura Visitor’s Center—and it was there to hook outsiders not on the region’s famous grapes but on wine’s spunkier, yeastier cousin.

The tour’s operator, Brew Bus 101 launched just a few months ago. Founded by an EMT and his college professor wife looking to start their own business, they found a niche taking tourists, work groups, and bachelor or bachelorette parties on tours of microbreweries. And they’re just one example of a burgeoning national beer tourism industry that’s drawing both visitors and big bucks.

Photo: Neal Ungerleider for Fast Company

Meet Meatball

On my visit, the Brew Bus (named after Highway 101, the coastal artery that connects Ventura with Santa Barbara) stopped by three local Ventura microbreweries and a restaurant over five hours. The company’s converted school bus was remodeled inside to fit 12 paying patrons, who had tables in front of them, comfortable bar-style padded seating, and USB ports. For the next couple of hours, tour guests swapped jokes and made new friends as the bus made its way from brewery to brewery.

The companies doing the pouring made sure bus riders had separate seating from other visitors, with my $65 ticket cost including sampler platters at each of the four breweries. Breweries that partner with the tour company are able to fill seats during the slower early afternoon hours and make extra income from the beers many riders purchased once they’d downed the offerings from the sampler. And for those with wooden legs or stronger constitutions, day-long tours that cover the stretch of highway from Ventura to Santa Barbara are available, as well.

The company’s tour bus also has a mascot painted on the side: a 78-pound, six-year-old bulldog named Meatball who was rescued from a local shelter. Inside the bus, Meatball rides with customers—a solid example of a pet-friendly business (Though the company, they say, makes accommodations for guests with dog allergies). Brew Bus 101 is still a young business with embryonic marketing efforts; they launched at the beginning of 2015 and I first came across them when they rented a booth at a Los Angeles beer festival. They work in a crowded field; in Ventura and Santa Barbara, approximately five other companies offer tours of local breweries. As a small business with only one bus, they’re still finding their sea legs: Social media marketing is still minimal, and promotion at this stage is primarily done through word of mouth in the tight-knit California craft-brew community.

For company co-founders Cody and Jacqueline Anderson, running the tour was a way to spend time together (along with Meatball) while building a successful business. “My job as an EMT has long shifts, and my wife is a professor at three different colleges,” Anderson tells me. “We wanted to come up with a business ideas that was something all three of us could do together. We felt like there wasn’t enough time together, that we were newlyweds, and frustrated by not being able to hang out. We looked at a bunch of different business models. This one stuck out and it all came together.” On the bus, Cody keeps the wheels on the road and the schedule flowing as patrons order extra pints at the bars on the route.

My visit included several Ventura-area breweries: Downtown Ventura’s Anacapa Brewing Company, Ventura Surf Brewery, Poseidon Brewing Company, and a food stop at the Nate Silver-endorsed taco destination Spencer Makenzie’s. As is the rule in southern California, the beer lists at the breweries skewed towards IPAs and other hoppy drinks.

Jacqueline, meanwhile, leads the passengers in road games like match-the-logo-to-the-beer-company and keeps the conversation flowing. Meatball gets the sweetest job of all—to sit in the corner on the bus in a very comfortable dog bed and guard the refrigerator stuffed full of bottled water. On beer tours, rehydration on the road is very important.

As we spoke—over the phone since noisy school buses or crowded bars aren’t too conducive for interviews—Cody said something that surprised me: the hardest part of his business was obtaining and customizing his vehicle. Drunk and rowdy customers, licensing issues, attracting new clients—no problems there. Getting a bus that was regulatory compliant and the right fit for day-long tours was.

For a family business offering bus tours with a single vehicle, Anderson learned, California emission standards (the infamous local “smog checks” were an unexpected challenge. Shortly before they were headed cross-country to Ohio to buy a used bus they found a good deal on, the Andersons discovered the Ohio bus wouldn’t have met California standards. Retrofitting it to meet local emission requirements would have cost thousands of extra dollars they didn’t have. Instead, the couple found an abandoned San Diego School District bus that ended up in a yard in the Los Angeles exurb of Oxnard. They saved their startup a significant pile of cash by buying locally, and then found accessories to renovate the interior on “eBay and whatnot.”

For the new tour company, finding breweries and local tourism authorities to work with proved easier than they had anticipated. They chose to focus on beer tours because the couple both enjoyed craft beers and visited local breweries frequently on weekends. The breweries they cold-called were familiar to them from their previous trips. “I cold-called each brewery, introduced myself as someone running a new business, and said we were interested as adding them as a stop,” Cody added. “Most of them were willing to sit down with us, talk about business, and introduce us with open arms.”

Brew Bus 101 then made another strategic move for a new beer tourism company: they made nice with the local convention and visitors bureau. “We sat down with the city of Ventura, and designed a tour for them exclusively in Ventura,” Anderson said. The company’s tours leave from in front of the Ventura Visitor Bureau, and are promoted on their site. The Ventura Visitor Bureau operates their own winery tour, but the beer front is free for aspiring entrepreneurs. Because Ventura and Santa Barbara are in easy day-trip distance of Los Angeles and its’ suburbs, beer tours are an easy way of generating money for local businesses.

When a brewery participates in a tour, Anderson says, both sides benefit. In exchange for a guaranteed large group of patrons coming in on off-hours, the breweries generally arrange reduced rates with Brew Bus 101. The patrons, meanwhile, pay full price for any drinks or food beyond the sampler, and are hopefully converted by the venue into repeat patrons. On my tour, we stopped in early on a Sunday afternoon and some of the breweries did quite well. At Ventura Surf Brewery, located in an industrial park, their homebrewing supply shop made considerable extra business from tour guests. They also made a really good porter.

The Beer Tourism Boom

Although wine is still the king for California alcohol tourism—Solvang, the setting for much of Sideways, is about 60 miles up the road from Ventura—beer tourism has been tapping an increasingly large percentage of the market. Although cities with dense concentrations of microbreweries like New York, Chicago, and Portland have been the biggest beneficiaries of the trend, it has meant even more to beer-loving rural regions looking for new tourism draws.

In western North Carolina, beer tourism has become a major economic force that drives hundreds of thousands of dollars in business for breweries around Asheville each year. An annual beer festival held by West-Coast brewer Sierra Nevada, which runs a brewery in North Carolina, attracted over 5,000 guests last year. Down the coast in Georgia, a new state bill allowing guests on brewery tours to drink samples on-site is being touted as a way to increase tourism.

Chris Gallant, co-founder of The Bronx Brewery In New York, tells Fast Company that out-of-towners comprise a significant portion of visitors to his brewery’s tasting room, especially on weekends. While most of the visitors on beer tours tend to be locals, he’s seen visitors from as far afield as Colorado and Sweden make the visit to his business (which is well off New York’s tourist path). There’s an added bonus, he says: Visitors tend to buy more expensive samplers, in order to try as many beers as possible.

The Bronx BreweryPhoto: courtesy of The Bronx Brewery

For larger breweries, the effects can be compounded even more. Adam Riehl, general manager at Washington’s Redhook Brewery, told Fast Company that “during the high season for tourism in 2014, between May and September, we received over 12,000 guests in our brewery for tours. The majority of these guests either came before the tour for lunch or stayed after, which has a significantly positive impact on our daily business. To put that number in perspective, outside tourist season we received about 1,200 guests per month for tours and that population was about 95% locals.”

Keeping Beer Tourism Flowing

Although beer tourism is increasingly popular, it faces a challenging problem: most tourists (including myself) are day-trippers rather than dedicated beer vacationers. Ventura and Santa Barbara get plenty of out-of-region visitors building a vacation around “Wine Country;” a “Beer Country” or a “Beer City” is a harder sell to tourists. But it’s getting better; the Oregon Craft Beer Board says the 2014 Oregon Brewers Festival in Portland bought $32.5 million into the local economy, with a majority of visitors being out of town tourists.

Meanwhile, for the Andersons, their challenges are the same as many other startups. How do they juggle hectic day jobs—being an adjunct professor or an EMT isn’t the most stress-free job—with running a small business? How do they attract new customers and pay the bills? How do they build relationships with the cruise ships that dock at Ventura and with the large conferences that meet at nearby hotels? “We’re working like crazy,” Anderson says, “But it’s worth it.”

All I knew, after spending a few hours wandering downtown Ventura post-tour and returning to sobriety before the drive back to Los Angeles, was that I tried some amazing beers I never would have encountered otherwise—I particularly recommend Surf’s Shaka IPA and Poseidon’s better-than-it-sounds Chocolate Starfish Stout. And a tourist town thick with surfers and kind ales isn’t a bad place to spend a Sunday.

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Mining for tourists? A dubious economic savior in Appalachia

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By JONATHAN DREW and ALLEN G. BREED
Associated Press

SECO, Ky. (AP) – Mines built this company town. Jack and Sandra Looney hope vines – the wine grapes growing on a former strip mine in the hills above – will help to draw visitors here.

Their Highland Winery – housed in the lovingly restored “company store” – pays tribute to coal-mining’s history here, as do their signature wines: Blood, Sweat and Tears.

“The Coal Miner’s Blood sells more than any of them,” Jack Looney says of the sweet red.

The couple have converted the store’s second and third floors into a bed and breakfast and restored a couple dozen of the old coal company houses as rentals.

Seco, like so many Central Appalachian communities, owes its existence to coal – its very name is an acronym for South East Coal Company. But as mining wanes, officials across the region are looking for something to replace traditional jobs and revenues.

In some of the poorest, most remote counties, about the only alternative people can come up with is tourism – eco-, adventure, or, as with the Looneys, historical and cultural. There are mining museums, festivals, wilderness adventures. Sub-regions have been rechristened with alluring names like the Hatfield-McCoy Mountains or the PA Wilds.

Proponents point to the region’s assets, its natural beauty, its distinctive mountain character. But others note the paradoxes: Environmental degradation alongside unspoiled areas, a history of poor education that for decades didn’t preclude high-paying jobs, an away-from-it-all feel partly caused by a lack of good roads and other infrastructure.

For all but a lucky few places with both assets and access, recent studies and spending data suggest, tourism may be a dubious savior.

“It’s kind of really odd that economic practitioners push tourism to be a propulsive industry when it has such low wages,” says Suzanne Gallaway, an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro

Sociologist Rebecca Scott, author of a book on mountaintop removal in her native West Virginia, says that state, the only one wholly included in the government’s definition of Appalachia, is “caught between the condition of being an extraction economy, a sacrifice zone, and yet having most of its sort of long-term successes in tourism being around nature-based tourism.”

Gallaway, who teaches at UNCG’s Bryan School for Sustainable Tourism and Hospitality, found that while tourism and hospitality accounted for 16 percent of all jobs in the region, those sectors produced just 7 percent of the wages.

“I wouldn’t put all of my eggs in that basket,” she says.

A 2012 report compiled for West Virginia’s Division of Tourism found that spending and hospitality employment have been slow to grow in many counties.

An exception was Harrison County, where direct tourism spending has more than doubled since 2004 – to $142 million – and hospitality employment has increased by more than 50 percent. But those numbers can be deceiving. Many rooms in the area’s hotels are being occupied by workers drilling in the nearby Marcellus shale formation, as coal has been replaced by hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas, says county commission president Ron Watson.

According to the economic report, tourism-related jobs in the Hatfield-McCoy Mountains – the marketing label for a cluster of coal-producing counties – actually dropped from 1,400 to 1,300 from 2004 to 2012.

Carole Morris, who was head of cultural tourism for the state of Kentucky before opening her own consultancy, says there’s a fine line between squashing initiative and encouraging pipe dreams.

A few years ago, Morris shared a $100,000 Appalachian Regional Commission grant to consult with several “distressed” counties. One of her clients was Forest County, Pennsylvania.

For generations, the county, dominated by the Allegheny National Forest, was a popular vacation destination for blue-collar workers, earning it the nickname “Pittsburgh’s playground.” But as manufacturing waned and tastes changed, Morris found, locals were left with a “tired product.”

A local planning group suggested rebranding the county as a “gateway” to the Lumber Heritage Region and the PA Wilds. The trick, Morris and team wrote in their action plan, was for the county to stay “true to its heritage of ‘the place to get away from it all,’ and respect its rural roots while moving into the new marketplace for tourism.”

In Kentucky, as environmentalists fight to protect areas not disturbed by mining, some longtime residents are trying to make the most of what the coal industry has left behind.

In its day, Lynch was the largest coal company town in the world. At its height in the 1940s, more than 10,000 people lived there; today, Lynch’s population hovers around 730.

But a mine there, Portal 31, has been given new life. Visitors can ride a miniature train several hundred feet into the hillside as a guide and animated exhibits illustrate mining history. Several company buildings have been restored.

Down the road in Benham, the former company store now houses the Kentucky Coal Mining Museum.

Museum Curator Phyllis Sizemore says the exhibition mine saw a record number of visitors in July: Just 1,033.

“I don’t look to tourism exactly as a savior,” she says. “I look at education as a savior.”

People like the Looneys know that doing tourism in an out-of-the-way place, especially one that’s been blasted and carved up, is an uphill battle.

When they bought it, the old company store was little more than a shell. They also had to petition for a vote to legalize alcohol sales in “dry” Letcher County. More than a decade after opening, Looney’s construction business is still lending the winery money.

The couple started the venture as a way to keep their daughter in the mountains. She eventually started her own vineyard with her husband in Lexington.

Jack Looney still hasn’t given up on Jean coming back to run things in Seco. If not, then there are always the grandkids.

“Maybe somebody will before I get too old to quit fooling with it.”

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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