Last August, T-Mobile announced its plan to invest $14 million and create 800 to 900 jobs. This was, by far, the largest recruited jobs project since the launch of Tell the World! two years earlier. In fact, it was the largest recruitment project in more than a decade and the most emphatic confirmation of our job creation strategy.
Even as T-Mobile officials joined local leaders in making the announcement, T-Mobile’s developers began the process of preparing the new site in order to meet the company’s ambitious timeline for making the facility operational.
T-Mobile wanted their newly hired employees to begin taking calls during the first quarter of 2006. Companies often need a year or more to construct a new facility and begin hiring, so T-Mobile’s commitment to a quick start-up was a welcome sign. But accomplishing that goal required a seven-day construction schedule.
As a result, nearby residents would hear noise from the construction site on the weekends. The existing municipal noise ordinance prevented weekend construction activities in heavy residential zones such as the one at the T-Mobile site on Highway 153 and U.S. 11.
I am proud to say that the City Council changed the ordinance to allow the project to move forward quickly. They recognized that the greater good of creating hundreds of jobs outweighed the short-term inconvenience of noise on the weekends for a few months.
We also owe our thanks to the residents who were affected by the project. Most people in our community will enjoy the economic benefit of adding nearly 1,000 jobs to our economy without any inconvenience at all, while many of the people who live near the site will feel the benefit of the facility only indirectly while shouldering more than their fair share of the inconvenience.
As our job creation efforts continue to build momentum, many of us may face similar nuisances in the form of construction noise or backed up traffic, and I hope we will all be as philosophical about the value of the big picture changes when weighed against everyday inconvenience.
