C-1 commercial district meeting, March 10, 2014
The Chestertown Town Council met Monday, March 10 at Big Mixx’s Beautiful Beginnings in Kent Plaza to hold open discussions with members of Chestertown’s C-1 commercial district. All ward representatives were present as well as newly elected Mayor Chris Cerino.
The meeting was the first in a series to be held in each of the community’s three commercial zones and was implemented to further engage black-owned businesses and potential startups with local government.
The dominant theme of the meeting was that businesses outside of downtown Chestertown received less attention than downtown businesses regarding economic development and asked the question, “are we a service community or a place for business growth.”
To enhance the business development in the C1 zone several ideas were offered.
Owners of Chestertown Lumber Co. and Sears brought up the idea of having the Council consider implementing with State Government an Enterprise Zone type of tax incentive to attract customers and to deflect from Delaware’s tax-free appeal.
Other topics included addressing the lack of local public transportation by inaugurating a trolley system between town and other outlying business areas, wi-fi availability outside of downtown, reaching out and helping those unfamiliar with modern online advertising platforms, and the concern with the lack of full-time employment opportunities.
The meeting attracted fewer members of the black community than the Council would have liked, but noted they that it was only the first one of its kind and looked forward to the next one.
The five videos below capture the meeting in its entirety, if some are unavailable that means they are still in the process of being uploaded.
The meeting was a just over 70 minutes.
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Ron Moore says
Editor,
Perhaps I missed it, but how about less punitive property tax rates? C1 leases put the burden on the leaseholder, not on the developer. How about water rates based on use? How about increasing occupancy rates, and giving people a reason to live here so that C1’s customer base will increase?
Perhaps I missed these points in the video, but it struck me like it was the same old business. Chestertown, over the past 20 years has managed to do exactly what they feared Wal-Mart would have done. At least Wal- Mart would have given us a hundred or so minimum wage jobs.