County refuses to let dyeing stuff pass away.

• Author: Martin, Edward

Spencer-based Color-Tex International Inc. bounced a check for its water bill -- about $20,000. Then its executives vanished into the blue. But what irked Rowan County Attorney John Holshouser was when trucks started carting off equipment in late July. "They were thumbing their noses at us."

That's a polite expression for the gesture the plant's owners were making. Either way, Rowan knew how to respond: It padlocked the plant to safeguard equipment that could be sold to cover the company's $263,000 in unpaid city-county property taxes.

Rowan moved quickly because of previous problems the company had given local folks. In September 2000, Spencer had cut off the plant's water because of the bounced check. Water went back on only after a pleading Sunday-night call from a plant manager to Mayor Buddy Gettys. "He asked what it would take to get it back on," Gettys recalls. "I said, 'Cash.'"

In October, the plant -- the town's largest employer -- shut down, owing its approximately 300 employees $350,000 in wages. The company also had kept $196,000 in insurance premiums withheld from paychecks, handing them over only after being ordered to by state regulators. The company had tried -- unsuccessfully -- to file for Chapter 11. That hadn't worried Rowan officials. Taxing authorities get paid first in a bankruptcy reorganization And Color-Tex's local property was assessed at about $4 million, which meant the taxes would have been more than covered if the property had been sold. Fleet National Bank in Boston held liens for far more...