During a session Thursday to talk about economic development goals, officials used an example of two local businesses that have already received incentives from the city of Wilmington and the county as a way to illustrate those listed in a new draft economic incentive policy.

In the research presented at the Thursday evening during a joint city-county meeting by county strategy and policy manager Beth Schrader, Live Oak Bancshares, parent company of Live Oak Bank and its spinoff nCino, would have received a little less money, while CastleBranch could have been awarded at least $170,000 more. That's if the draft Economic Development Jobs Incentive Policy had been in place at the time.

The proposal is based on the number of new full-time jobs created or retained, multiplied by a monetary allocation per job. For example, jobs with a highest hourly wage listed, $25 and above, would be allocated $5,000 per job in certain businesses and industry clusters, while positions with the lowest wage in the chart of up to $12 an hour would receive $500 to $550 per job.

Live Oak and nCino received $325,000 from the county and $250,000 from the city, after the firms stated they planned to make a $16 million investment in property and create 120 jobs with average salaries of $80,000, according to an overview of the draft incentives policy compiled by county administration. CastleBranch's numbers were 400 jobs at average salaries of $35,000 and $9 million in property, and the company received $500,000, split between the city and county, in 2013.

CastleBranch is a background screening company, and nCino is a banking software firm. On Thursday, a CastleBranch spokesperson said the company's employment figure has grown to just under 400, and the firm held a job fair Friday. 

Under the draft incentives policy, a company with the same plans as Live Oak and nCino that meets the criteria could stand to be awarded between $515,000 and $545,000, while a company with CastleBranch's intended investment would get $670,000 to $737,500. But those figures are based on estimates, suppositions and analysis of current jobs, and the companies have not yet reached the total number of hires planned, Schrader explained.

She emphasized that the comparisons of the existing local companies was for illustrative purposes only.

“This just helps give you some context . . .with the kind of scale as it's proposed, this is what winds up happening,” Schrader said Thursday at the meeting, held in a conference room at the Wilmington Police Department.

It's up to the elected officials, in the county and perhaps in the city, to decide how they want to weight the incentive scale in terms of offering more or less to companies with higher paying jobs compared to those that would bring a larger number of jobs, she said.

Eligible businesses could include manufacturing in certain categories planning to locate in by-right zoning areas and not those that would need to apply for a county special use permit, Schrader said. That potential provision is because of the need for a quasi-judicial hearing before a special use permit can be granted, she explained.

Some other possibly eligible business sectors include medical services likely to attract at least 30 percent of patients from outside the Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area; and speculative industrial buildings leased to tenants in manufacturing; research and development; or warehousing and distribution.

“It's really about creating and retaining value-added jobs,” Schrader said.

Other businesses that might be able to apply for incentives in the draft policy: corporate headquarters with the majority of revenues coming from outside the Wilmington MSA; and freight or passenger transportation services.

Schrader said the draft policy shares aspects with, but in some ways differs from, the city's current incentive policy. “It's written very broadly as if it was one policy for both [the city and county], with the option to be either,” she said.

City manager Sterling Cheatham said it might be time for the city to consider the possibility of updating its incentive policy. Schrader suggested that elected officials discuss and mark up their draft policies with their thoughts and recommendations for changes.

The commissioners and council members who attended Thursday's meeting said very little about the draft economic policy, which they received for the first time at the session, unlike a longer discussion they had earlier in the meeting on progress toward improving infrastructure along U.S. 421. Along with creating a county incentives policy, the U.S. 421 goal was another economic development recommendation, made in an economic analysis called the Garner report, that the city and county chose to tackle at a joint meeting last year.