Holly Springs gets stuck by incentives.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: TAR HEEL TATTLER

Maybe Holly Springs should hold a really big bake sale. But the town would have to sell a lot of cookies, brownies and cakes to make up the $11.8 million gap between what it has promised to spend on Swiss drug maker Novartis to land a vaccine plant and what it has on hand.

Town officials said in July that Novartis would invest at least $267 million to build a vaccine factory, which will create 350 jobs paying an average of nearly $50,000 a year. They also said in a statement that they had promised the company $8.3 million in incentives. What they didn't mention was they also had committed to road and other improvements that brought the cost to $21.9 million.

Only about $10.1 million had been earmarked for the project by the town, state or other entities such as The Golden LEAF, the Rocky Mount nonprofit that disburses proceeds from half the state's $4.6 billion share of the national tobacco settlement. It pitched in $800,000. "The town of Holly Springs is overextended and has significant gaps in meeting the demands of Novartis," Town Manager Carl Dean admitted in a letter seeking $6 million from Golden LEAF, which anted up an additional $1.25 million. The town is asking for more state and federal funds.

Officials insist that the town of about 15,000 will keep...