Mayoral candidate appears on local talk radio show

Tekac spoke to homeowners for more than two hours. — File photo of mayoral candidate, Jerry Tekac.

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. – Recently, mayoral candidate, Jerry Tekac, appeared on The Bryan Crabtree Show, WQSC 1350 and 950, to discuss his run for mayor of Goose Creek and a major issue facing the city.

Tekac, who has been on city council for the last six years and a banker for the past 27, believes a major issue in the city is the disproportional amount of residents to businesses.

“Looking in Goose Creek, we have 4,200 homes coming in our Carnes Crossroads area, only building single family houses does not support the services they require,” said Tekac. “You have to have corresponding commercial growth that goes along with that, and our current mayor does not support the growth,” said Tekac.

Tekac is running against longtime mayor Michael Heitzler who’s been in office since the late 1970s.

While Tekac has argued that the city is not business friendly, Heitzer has said before he disagrees. He says the city really focused heavily on bringing businesses to the area in 1995 after the first round of base closures and created an economic development advisory committee.

“They’re made up of seven business owners in Goose Creek, and their only responsibility is for them to advise city council on initiatives and on strategies that we can employ to make our community business friendly without selling our souls,” said Heitzler. “There has to be a constructive balance to all of that.”

Heitzler says it’s the city’s current strategy that has brought Wal-mart, Lowes, Publix and Bi-Lo to the area. He added that the city has also created a business hub in downtown Goose Creek.

“We’ve spent $ 5 million in renovating our roads in downtown Goose Creek and in landscaping by putting in curbs and gutters,” stated the mayor. “We have a beautiful downtown that is ready to emerge as soon as the economy gives us a little break we are going to have businesses . Old businesses are going to come down and new businesses are going to go up in their place.”

During his radio interview, Tekac emphasized that Goose Creek’s budget heavily relies on revenue generated by area businesses.

“We work on a budget of a little over $17 million, of that our largest revenue source is business licenses and permits, and that equates to 28-29 percent of our revenue,” Tekac said.

If more businesses are not brought to Goose Creek, Tekac said the city will have to follow in the footsteps of what Mt. Pleasant has recently done by increasing property taxes.

“Like Mt. Pleasant, we will have to either decrease services or increase taxes to support those services,” warned Tekac.

During The Bryan Crabtree Show, the host brought up the fact that some people in Goose Creek believe that bringing in more businesses will actually increase the current congestion of traffic the city already has. However, Tekac believes that more businesses would mean less traffic.

“They will have a smaller drive time going from home to work,” said Tekac.

According to Tekac, the reason the city does not have too many businesses is because of recruitment.

“As a city we do not actively recruit industries to come to us, we want for them go approach us, and when they do, we make it too difficult for them to do business,” he added.

The Goose Creek general election will be held on April 8th.

To listen to Tekac’s radio interview, click here.

The Bryan Crabtree Show airs from 8-10 a.m. on WQSC 1340 and 950 AM. You can visit the show’s website by clicking here. You can also catch Rocky D on the same airwaves from 3-6 p.m.