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- What is that old saying, that all politics are local?

It may have an urban legend tinge to it, but it certainly seems to be true, and certainly seems to be true now.

Welcome again to the most widely-watched, and the longest running program on Carolina business policy and public affairs seen across North and South Carolina for more than three decades.

So, if all politics are local, wouldn't that follow that probably the best political discussions, or it may be at least the most effective, should be done on the local hometown level?

We will unpack that with our local political leaders, a panel of city chief executives, better known as mayors.

From Charlotte, Vi Lyles, from Hartsville in South Carolina, Casey Hancock, and from Greensboro, Nancy Vaughan, and we start right now.

- [Narrator] Major funding also by Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

And Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource-based building materials, providing the foundation on which our communities improve and grow.

(upbeat music) On this edition of Carolina Business Review, our guest panel of mayors from North Carolina, mayors Vi Lyles of Charlotte, and Nancy Vaughan of Greensboro.

From South Carolina, Casey G.G Hancock of Hartsville.

(upbeat music continues) - Welcome again to our program.

It's important to note at the top of this dialogue that Charleston Mayor William Cogswell, is not here.

He was scheduled to be here unexpectedly at the last moment, couldn't even join us virtually.

So send our condolences to him.

I'm sure he's fine.

It's just one of those things that we can't have the low country mayor here, but we are glad that you are all here.

So welcome and thank you.

- My pleasure.

- Thanks.

- And I'll just say this to you, God bless you because you haven't been on the program before our other mayors have, and Mayor Hancock, I promise, it's not gonna be a painful experience, but thanks for joining us both.

- I think they prepared me well.

(all laughing) - Mayor Lyles, since you're closest, I'll start with you.

Giving everything going on now, of course, Presidential election year, the economy, is the data, say recession, is it expansion?

All of the things that are going on, what is job one for you right now?

- Chris, that's a great question, and I have a very, very simple answer.

Our idea around how we want our residents to be able to have a decent place to live, to have a job with dignity, and have the ability to get to and from home and work in a reasonable amount of time so that we can have the quality of life that we choose for everyone.

So my number one initiative right now is transportation planning for the future, for people to be able to take advantage of job opportunities and places that, we have job deserts, just like food deserts.

So when I start thinking about Atrium is going to open the medical campus and it's gonna have 5,000 new jobs.

Most of those jobs will only require two years of education or certification.

But if you don't have a car to get to work on time, how do we have a transit system that works for our entire, our organization, our businesses, and our people?

- Job one for you, Mayor Vi?

- I share a lot of the same concerns and challenges that the city of Charlotte does.

Our focus really is on housing at this point.

We really need tremendous amount of housing at all price points.

We talk a lot about affordable housing.

I also talk about attainable housing, that we've gotta be able to have houses for everyone.

Our homeless population is growing.

We have to find a way to allow them to live with dignity as well.

All of this is a challenge for our budget.

That we can have the adequate infrastructure in place to look at housing really as economic development.

So looking at our ordinances, how can we change them to increased density, and really respond to the need that we feel right now?

I would say that just about every city or town in North Carolina has an issue with housing.

- South Carolina, Hartsville, Darlington County, smaller than Charlotte and Greensboro for sure.

And our other mayor was gonna be here, Charleston for sure.

Would you say it's a rural community?

Do you have a different point of view?

So we heard transportation and housing.

So Mayor Hancock, what's job one for you, given all those parameters?

- It's interesting how similar the issues that we face are to our larger peers.

These cities may be two orders of magnitude larger than Hartsville.

But some of our top issues, diversity, growth, we share the same, the same problems and some of the same solutions.

Now, we may not have as much trouble with transportation in town, given just the size of our city.

But to your question of how national politics affect those conversations, Hartsville is very fortunate as a city, and we are very fortunate as a council, I'm grateful that we're, we don't declare office when we're one for office.

And that helps keep the air clean in a very big way.

And the other part of that is when the influence of national political discourse becomes a part of the conversation, we have to say, we have to say, stop and wait a minute, we are neighbors, you and I, we can't be yelling at each other in City Hall and then go home and see each other across the fence.

So if we can put the, the emotion of those issues aside, it allows us to really talk about what really is meaningful to us in Hartsville and how can we move forward.

- So thanks for broaching that, mayor Hancock.

So given that there is going to be maybe a change in the White House, is there a plan B?

You talk about transportation, Mayor Lyles.

You talk about housing Mayor Vaughan.

Is there a plan B given that there may be a change on the national level, or does it really matter?

- I don't know that it matters.

We've been through a lot of changes on the national level.

We are also nonpartisan.

I think it's important that we stay nonpartisan, that we don't get embroiled not only in national politics, but state politics.

As you said, you wanna have a good working relationship with everyone.

We are looking at our region.

We wanna have a good working relationships with the counties around us.

And I think we've seen a lot of success in that, such as the Greensboro, Randolph mega site.

We are very different than Randolph County, but we came together with one goal in mind, and that was better quality of life for all our citizens and well-paying jobs.

So if you can work together with people for an end goal, it's a win-win for everyone.

- Nancy's so correct about this.

Well, we have partisan elections for our council.

What really matters, or what are you doing for the people that you work with every day and how do we make sure that their lives are at their very best, that everyone is thriving.

So when we think about what we are trying to do, we have every month the Mecklenburg mayors, all of us from all of the towns, we have lunch together just to- - [Chris] How many is that?

- That is six, three to the north, three to the south, and me, seven.

So when we have these luncheons, it's an open conversation and dialogue about what's going on in an area that needs to have regionalism at the first and foremost part of what we accomplish and do.

And I will tell you at the federal level, no matter what we say, urban roads and urban communities that are necessary, the federal government has been doing highways and transportation as long as we can all remember.

That's not going away, because that is something that this country needs to determine.

How do we have great transportation and still have a sustainable lifestyle for our people?

- I know you know this, but it's worth saying, and we couldn't get the statistic in South Carolina, Mayor Hancock, but we know in North Carolina last year, that it was the first time in the old North States history that the unaffiliated voters were more than the Democrats and the Republicans that were registered.

And I couldn't get the statistical information for South Carolina, but to the point.

And I think the spirit of what you said about that.

So as the populace moves toward this unaffiliated wanna all get along kind of a thing, and I don't, I'm not being sarcastic about it.

Does the national debate around Republican versus Democratic, extreme versus extreme, is that late to the game and now the general public has already moved to an idea of how can we get together sands this argument across a political divide?

- I would say yes.

Occasionally I'll have one of those national talking point issues sort of come up, but we can usually pretty quickly get past it.

And it's not that often us, the just conversations that I have with my councilmen or the citizens of Hartsville are really more about what we're seeing in our town.

So I think to your point that yeah, I think we are sort of a little bit already past that in most cases.

Mayor Vi?

- I would agree.

I think that we're past it.

I think that's why you see so many people registering Independent, because they're kind of just tired of the polarization on both ends of the spectrum.

And we really have to focus on what's in the middle and doing what's best for our community.

- So your predecessor, or one of your predecessors, Pat Macquarie, was part of the idea of the no labels, and they've sputtered a little bit here in this election year.

We'll see what happens with that.

But, but Mayor Lyles, back to the, I guess the spirit around the idea of having something that everyone can get around them, besides having money flowing to the extremes of the left and the right.

How do you come down on that?

- Well, that's a great question because sometimes those extremes do require a lot of discussion and weight and determining how to make it a better conversation than we can have.

But we have a democratic council, we have two members of the Republican Party, and we work well together.

In fact, most of these folks that are on my council, they serve on committees and they share a common goal to come up with the answer that we can afford.

And it's best for the community.

I think that we do have in this time, just because of the ability to, for the media to hype, all of this, it's a tough go for people.

And I am concerned about how the social context can be so divisive that we forget what we are here for as a country, as a city.

And so we work really hard to think about how do we do something in our region that works for everyone, because that's the closest that we have.

It's better when we know what's going on in Greensboro or Raleigh or Chapel Hill, you look at that I77 corridor, you know where the jobs are and where the population grows.

So we have to treasure that.

We have to make sure it's everyone is successful in this area, even when there seems to be great divisiveness in the country.

- And it doesn't benefit our residents for us to be partisan because we need to work with everyone.

I mean, we've really worked hard on our relationship with the legislature.

We've had some rocky years, but we know that we need the legislature, transportation, money, all sorts of money, the ability to do different things that we have to get enabling legislation.

It's not good for our community to be at odds with the legislature.

We have to find that middle ground.

And I think that in our area, we've come a long way.

We learn by the mistakes that we made.

It really does not benefit our residents at all for us to get to political one way or the other.

- To their points, I think it's demonstrated that, when I think about, when I talk to the elected officials that represent Hartsville PD, PD is largely a red region, obviously.

But the national talking points don't come up.

I ask them, what's important to you?

What are you working on?

They ask me, what's important to you?

What problems are you having?

And they very quickly we see where the overlap is.

And I think it's my job to maintain those relationships, and in order to get as many resources as I can from the state and federal governments to help Hartsville be better.

And those relationships are healthy.

I'm friends with our representatives both at the state and national level, because we're all just trying to make our homes better, right?

- Switching gears a little bit, you all have made some reference to economic development and the growth of the region over the years.

And certainly you, it's arguably one of the best in the country now, in fact, in the summer of last year, it was first reported and documented.

It's five Southern, five or six southern states, the Carolinas for sure, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, gross state products combined for the first time in the country's history have eclipsed that of the Northeast.

That means there is a center of gravity of wealth in the South.

And we all knew it and we all felt it, but now it's been documented.

So, and I'll call it the dog catching the car.

So now what does the South do with this tremendous growth?

And it is tremendous growth, documented, but it also brings the issues of too much growth.

So how do you manage that.

In a city like Charlotte, how do you manage incredible growth?

- Oh my gosh, that is a question that we could talk about for a long time, Chris, but let me just take a couple of things that I think we have to manage.

We have to manage our public education.

We have to make sure that as people, we have approximately 35 new people moving into Charlotte every day.

Now that's beyond, that's just Charlotte, not the entire region, which is over 100 people moving into the regional area.

So when we look at that, we know that they bring with them their kids, they bring with them ideas that they can have for opportunity.

So we want to be able to create jobs and continue to recruit people.

The business community is such a viable part of our ecosystem for economic development.

So we work really well with the business community when we talk about the alliance, where we go out and attract businesses, we are building opportunities for tourism, we are building opportunities for sports and entertainment.

All of these things you have to have.

I think that everyone knows that if you're not growing, that's not a good sign for a city.

And so we continuously track how do we grow and maintain a good quality life, jobs, again, opportunities for people to participate in our economy, as well as the opportunity to live a good life.

- And Greensboro went from zero to 60 in about 1.8 seconds here when it comes to economic development recently, and I'm not telling you anything Mayor Vi, but the idea that now you've got these massive economic development projects going on, how do you manage that?

That's a good problem to have, but it's still a problem.

- Yeah, so that's been our last two years, which is great because we had put all the pieces in place to allow for these great announcements.

Now we're kind of in a growing pain situation where you see the building going on, but the jobs aren't here yet.

And we're working very closely.

You'd mentioned education, we're working closely with our school system and our technical colleges and higher education to make sure that our residents are trained and upskilled to fill these jobs.

I won't consider this a success if our residents aren't first in line to get those well-paying jobs.

And then of course, we've talked about being in a housing crisis, but we're gonna amplify that because if you've got a Toyota that brings 6,000 jobs, they estimate there's five jobs for everyone.

So you're looking at 30,000 jobs just on that one announcement in our region.

- 30,000 jobs?

- So that's the spinoff potential.

Oh, the ancillary effect is one- - Just from that one Toyota announcement, nothing about any of the other announcements and the things that are going on out at the airport.

So we know that the problems that we have in some ways are gonna be amplified.

People have to be willing to play the long game to know that right now we're struggling a little bit, but that's just because it's growing pains.

- Is there patience to play the long game in the triad for you?

- I think there is, as we explain it and people understand.

Some of these announcements take a few years to actually come to fruition when they open the door and people are working.

This is the time where we have to get our residents to situate themselves so they can get the education they need, that we can make sure the transportation is in place for them.

So I think we are at a wonderful position right now, but yeah, people need to be a little patient.

- Just yesterday we had in forum, we had over 300 small businesses come into the building to let them understand that there were gonna be these opportunities, but you have to be prepared for them.

And so we are trying to get people into the space that they can begin to plan for this kind of growth and opportunity.

What's gonna be needed?

How are we gonna get trades people for the housing construction that we're doing?

How are we gonna get people that have licenses and medical care, all of these things.

I think the greatest thing that we all can do as mayors is explain to the community that you are engaging with us.

This is not something we are doing.

This is something that we are actually planning for you to participate in.

- Mayor Hancock, not far from you, in the Midlands, Richland County, just north of Columbia.

Scout Motors announced that major obviously announcement last year.

But it's the same scale of thousands of jobs, of huge investment.

Anything that you heard.

How does this ring with you?

How would you characterize growth and managing growth?

- Well, it's another one of those situations where it's different, but it's similar.

We are not gonna land a Toyota factory or a Boom Supersonic in Hartsville.

We're not close to an interstate.

But I'm grateful for that we're not close to an interstate because it has informed the character of our town.

And what we have tried to do is position ourselves as, sometimes we call it a bedroom community, but we offer an alternative to, you know, the city life.

And we have a lot of people that commute from Columbia and Charlotte to work in Hartsville and vice versa every day.

And we want to amplify that and advertise ourselves as.

Look, if you know different people, like different sorts of lifestyles, right?

And there's nothing wrong with any of 'em, but for someone who works in Columbia or a Charlotte, or Myrtle Beach that's looking for that small town experience, we offer that.

And we're not gonna grow a hundred people a day.

If we get one a day, we're pretty happy, right?

But we are seeing that growth, and we still have to have to keep an eye on and work with our educational partners, right?

Some of the same things applies, just the scales a little bit different.

- Part of the cycle in business, and as we talk about the growth has been commercial real estate.

And again, I'm gonna pick on Charlotte a little bit because I know it so well.

So I know Greensboro to some degree, Mayor one but not as well as Charlotte.

And the idea that Charlotte has a measurable vacancy rate of 20-plus percent or so, but what developers will say the whisper rate is more like 40%.

How concerning is that to you?

- Well, I think it's very concerning because we pride ourselves on that center city, but we also pride ourselves on growing residential uses in our center city, continuing to have a vibrant financial services industry.

So we believe that there is gonna be some time that we will have to make some adjustments.

And we're seeing that now and people are saying, but I also want people to remember that, remember we had the Centene Bus Company, we built this huge office tower, and it has now been purchased, and it is going to be filled with new jobs.

- Now, you remember for Vanguard.

The Centene announcement they announced.

How big was the building?

- I think it was over 3,000 employees plan.

- For that big, and then they pulled out.

- And they pulled out during COVID because they said that they could move their work technology into people's homes.

So working from home was a part of their, and I think they had a success with it, but we had that building, and they committed that they would complete it, and now it's been purchased and now it will be filled with people.

So I think that we just all have to be nimble.

I believe that as companies come in and they make their decisions, we have to go to them and say, okay, how do we make sure that retention of what you're doing is something that we can support and value?

- So Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem for a while had the specter of, and forgive me for saying this, Mayor Vaughan, but kind of whistling past the graveyard.

When you went downtown or center cities, and not energizing, not exciting.

What is it like now, and even with the vacancy rate?

Is that a wind, is that a headwind for you?

How do you feel about that?

- So our downtown really is growing.

It certainly is nowhere near as large as Charlotte, but we have just seen new businesses open up, lots of new restaurants.

We always have great festivals downtown.

The Tanker Center for Performing Arts is one of the best-performing facilities in the country.

Brings over a half a million people downtown every year.

I know that the head of our downtown association through AI Placers says that we've got about 8.4 million visitors per year into Downtown Greensboro.

I mean, that is a huge number When we're a city of 300,000 people.

We love that tourism economy, have other dollars come into our community.

One thing that we realized, in COVID, and I'm sure that you both felt that a lot of people went home remote and ended up staying remote.

We are beginning to see a lot of employers who said that they were gonna be permanently remote now calling people back to work.

That at least on a somewhat limited schedule, whether it's three days a week or four days a week, because the productivity has gone down, and those constructive collisions that happen in the corridors aren't happening online.

So we're beginning to see more action in the office towers downtown.

One thing that I know that one of them had decided not to reopen their cafeteria because they want their employees out on the streets downtown.

Well, that's interesting.

Visiting those restaurants, shopping in those stores.

So we're grateful for that.

And what did you call it?

- Creative collisions.

- That's interesting.

Where did you get that from?

- Oh, I'm sure he stole it from someone.

(all laughing) - We're gonna run out of time.

About a minute left.

Mayor Hancock, does Hartsville have a vacancy problem downtown?

- I will admit that I've never considered vacancy, but if I had to guess two years ago it was zero.

And today it has probably risen up to one.

Real estate listings may, the market has cooled a little bit.

A house may stay in the market for a couple of weeks instead of a couple of days as it was in the past.

But more than anything, we have a demand problem.

We have long had an issue where it's very hard to find somewhere to live in Hartsville, specifically in the city limits.

- Really, and what's the total head count?

What's the population of Hartsville property?

- The Census says 7,400, but I think in reality it's closer to eight.

We've got probably 120 homes under development, whether it's plant or construction right now.

And this is the first time we've seen that kind of development in a while.

So it's really exciting that we're finally gonna be able to help alleviate some of the demand problem we have.

- That's the last word.

Thank you.

Thank you, mayor.

- Thank you.

- I'm always glad to be here.

- We appreciate your leadership and taking the slings and arrows, because I know it's not an easy job whether you're a Democrat, Republican, or affiliated.

Thank you all.

Thank you for watching our program.

If you have any questions or comments, it's easy.

CarolinaBusinessReview.org.

Until next week, happy weekend and happy spring.

- [Narrator] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, Sonoco, High Point University, Colonial Life, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

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