Thursday, September 24, 2009

Advice From Experience

This is an Email sent to P.R.I.Z.E. from someone who found us on Twitter. They had a similar fight with their Town and proposed Walmart.


I live in Spooner, Wisconsin, a small town in the northern part of the state. We have very little industry here, we survive on a summer tourist trade. Population of around 2,600, we do have a nice downtown and new modern grocery store. There are Walmart Supercenters 25 miles away in two directions. We were shocked to find out after illegal, closed-door meetings, that our county sold 35 acres of land to Walmart in November of 2005. There was much secrecy and Walmart didn’t come forward for many months, so that the ground work could be laid. There would need to be millions of dollars of road work done to accommodate them. I am a retail meat cutter and would certainly be in jeopardy of losing my job if they came to town. Many business people had concerns and we formed Washburn County First, concerned citizens for real growth. We met at a local church in March of 2006 for the first time. Our goal at first was to expose the open meeting violation by the county and hopefully negate the land sale. We needed a land use lawyer, we gathered $10,000 from local businessmen. After many months and meetings, we attended every county board and city hall meeting, also committee meetings such as planning commission and zoning. It was a long, long process. One I am just now getting over with.

The city overturned an ordinance for Walmart for highway access, with an underhanded variance hearing. So we filed two law suits, one against the city and one against the county. It took many months to come to trial, they dismissed the city suit on the variance and the county was found in violation of the open meeting law and had to pay a fine.....

The ruling on the open meeting violation was, in the end our only victory. Never, over a 3 year period, did a single other ruling, county board vote, city hall vote or any other decision go in our favor. At every turn the deck was stacked to help Walmart come to our little town. Like you, our comprehensive plan was re-written to remove a section that specifically warned of the dangers of big box stores on a small towns economy! Our officials took the bait from the Walmart PR people, hook, line and sinker. They were sold on a concept of new jobs, new tax revenue and more people moving here to grow the economy. They were wrong on every level. These jobs would have come at the cost of other small businesses. Walmart is know for not paying their share of taxes and go to great lengths to avoid them, and no one is moving here for their minimum wage jobs. This debate really divided our town. We received hate mail, harassing phone calls and even a personal attack by our Mayor in the newspaper.

As this played out the economy slowed, the cost of building rose and Walmart’s interest faded away. In the end they failed to pay for an extension on the land sale and walked away from our town. The city and the county wouldn’t take no for an answer, so they offer a $1,000,000 tax payer bailout to help with construction and a TIFF deal. Fortunately, Walmart moved on. This was just last March 2009.

1 comment:

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