NCR To Relocate, Bring 2-K Jobs To Georgia

Official word has come this morning that a Fortune 500 company is moving to Georgia, bringing with it more than 2,000 jobs. The automated equipment firm NCR will move its corporate headquarters from Ohio to metro Atlanta’s Duluth. In addition, the company will also build a manufacturing plant in Columbus. The move will spur 1,250 jobs to the metro Atlanta area, and bring 870 fresh jobs to west Georgia. NCR has strong ties to Georgia already, with hundreds of workers in the metro Atlanta region currently, and another 900 jobs to be created with a facility in Peachtree City. NCR makes cash registers and bank ATM’s among various produced equipment.

Transportation Bill Sails Through Senate

The State Senate passed a transportation bill Tuesday that is favored by Atlanta business groups and takes a regional approach to funding projects.

It would leave a decision to raise taxes up to voters. Yet the bill is designed with Metro Atlanta in mind. The area already has a ten county region. The bill aims to let those counties charge a one percent sales tax to fund transportation projects. Other counties would vote on the measure individually or as a group of neighboring counties.

Senator Kasim Reed from Atlanta says improving the state’s roads and traffic problems is key to growing the state.

“This bill is about job creation and maintaining metro-Atlanta’s dominance and our state’s dominance as a place where business can grow, work and thrive.”

Atlanta business groups like the Senate bill because they believe the projects would ease congestion and aide the economy. The House, for its part, prefers a statewide tax that funds designated projects across Georgia. That plan would cost $25 billion over ten years.

Recent rain prevents driest year for Atlanta

A good dose of weekend rain across metro-Atlanta will prevent the area from setting a new mark for driest year in the record books. Showers fell long enough across the area to total about 1.3 inches on Sunday-—pushing the rain total for the year to 31.85 inches. That is about a half-inch more than the mark from the year 1954, which will still stand as the driest on record for Atlanta. However, even with rain across the Atlanta-area in 10 of the past 12 days, the National Weather Service says it has had minimal effect on replenishing Lake Lanier. The latest record low for Lanier came last Wednesday. Since that time, the lake’s level has only risen less than an inch.