MOULTRIE, Ga. — The Moultrie-Colquitt County Development Authority has long made financial incentives available for industries seeking to move to Colquitt County. On Wednesday, the authority’s board of directors re-affirmed that the same doesn’t go for retail stores.

Authority Chairman Jim Matney told members during Wednesday’s board meeting that a retail company had asked the authority for $300,000 to offset costs of opening a store in Moultrie. 

He and others were careful not to identify the prospect, but they did say it would employ 12-15 people, a combination of full- and part-time employees with wages about $2-3 over minimum wage (which is currently $7.25 per hour). The company expects to invest $5 million in the proposed store, and it expects something between $3-1/2 million and $5 million in sales each year.

Authority President Barbara Grogan noted that the community would recoup the $300,000 investment with the sales taxes on the company’s expected sales, but she also acknowledged the store would compete with existing businesses.

Greg Yarbrough was among the first board members to voice opposition because he feared the precedent that would be set.

“That’s a minimum amount of employees at [a] minimum wage,” he said.

Daniel Dunn agreed, saying paying this prospect would incentivize other retail stores to ask for a handout.

Moultrie City Manager Pete Dillard, a non-voting member of the board, also warned of setting a precedent.

“Whatever you do, you’ve got to be prepared to do for everybody,” he said.

The board voted unanimously not to offer the company the money, but member Marc DeMott asked Grogan to find out what the company wanted to use it for. The authority or others in the community might be able to support them in other ways, such as paving a road, but he was also opposed to just giving away money.

The authority has discussed incentives for retail stores before, but the circumstances were different. In March 2018, the board voted to make such developments eligible for property tax concessions, but the move applied only to developments with $10 million or more in capital investment and at least 100 full-time jobs — that’s twice as much money and many times more full-time jobs than the prospect that was considered Wednesday.

In an email conversation on Thursday, Grogan said this is the first retail incentive request she’s received since joining the Development Authority in May 2019, and she can’t recall a large retail development here since Publix came in 2016 — two years before the authority made such developments eligible for tax breaks.