I
spoke at the 7/28/15 Board of Supervisors hearing regarding Lynn Morgan’s
urgency ordinance to ban formula businesses in District 3, an action prompted
by the soon to be Dollar General store in Buckhorn. My remarks follow:
“I
am absolutely opposed to this proposed ordinance. While there is much I could
say, I will limit myself to two issues. First, this proposal makes everything
more complex, adding to what I consider a disturbing trend pervasive throughout
our society in big and small ways. Often in the name of an improvement, real or
just imagined, more rules are made. In the end this added complexity creates
more problems than it solves. Once upon
a time, we Americans achieved economic greatness by simplifying machinery.
Formula
stores include franchises. These opportunities allow ordinary people to start a
business without having to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel. There are
almost 3,000 franchises available with a dozen or so around $10,000 or
less. These include cleaning services,
glass repair, travel agencies and exercise studios. Given this situation some people will request
that the ordinance include exemptions and appeal procedures. Aside from the additional expense, this
creates another huddle for a beginning business by someone who still probably
has their day job. It could cancel someone’s dream. To add to their difficulty
and to inhibit the country’s economic health for someone’s subjective
aesthetics and personal preferences doesn’t seem like a fair deal to me.”
Her
proposal was defeated on a 4 to 1 vote, but many people spoke in favor of the
ordinance. They all wanted to pick and choose through new regulations what
businesses can locate upcountry. While I understand their sentiment of not
wanting homogenous structures that look the same as everywhere else, their willingness
to trade away economic freedom for cutesy buildings seems unbalanced and naïve.
Don’t they understand that it’s their own economic freedom that they are
destroying? Aren’t they shooting themselves in the foot with perhaps a few year
time delay before realization?
When
one looks around the world, they discover that a country’s amount of poverty is
directly proportional to the amount of economic regulation it has. “It takes 2
days to start a business in Australia, but 203 days in Haiti and 215 days in
the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Additionally, the more rules there are the
greater the incentive there is to avoid them and consequently the greater
amount of regulation the greater the amount of corruption. These fine examples illustrate how we can
regulate ourselves into unfairness and poverty. But here in Amador County, it’s
slow, incremental steps so that it may be too late when we experience their
cumulative impact and wonder how this happened.
There
were valid claims, at the hearing, about the traffic flow on Meadow Vista
Drive. But that is a factor for the existing building permit process. If that
somehow doesn’t work than that process needs changing, not the creation of a
new layer of regulation however temporary it’s proposed to be at first.
Copyright
2015, Mark L. Bennett
I was unable to attend, but I was abel to listen via streaming audio. As almost always, Mr. Bennett's comments were timely and correct. As a resident of District #3, having been to Supervisor Morgan's meeting in late June and by following all the comments on various the Facebook pages concerning Dollar General, I noticed that a few vital details did not come up yesterday.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the ordinance, which is poorly composed with numerous unentended consequences and loopholes, is really a smokescreen to cover up the fact that the property in question in Buckhorn was sold to Dollar General by a major campaign supporter and personal friend of Ms. Morgan. Statements on Facebook by her supporters and by Morgan herself condradict her statement, "I new nothing about it till early May." She did know about it long before that, and she sat on the info till the escrow process was almost finished. Then and only then did wsh let her constituents know. Yesterday's sideshow was only intended to make her look like she is concerned and to give her supporters a chance to vent. She knew it had no chance of passing and for good reason.
Second, there were legitimate concerns over trafic, health, safety, etc. However, as Mr.Bennett stated all of those concerns will be dealt with once the permiting, planning and buliding process begins. Any of us who have built a house in Amador County's Upcountry knows that where and how you imagined your house sitting on a lot full trees can change, sometimes drasticly once the actual plans and building process begins. It will be the same with the Dollar General store.
Finally, I noticed that the comments by people opposed did not match the comments made at Morgan's meeting. When responding to the Dollar General represenative almost everyone, and they were mostly older in age, began their question with a form of the statement "When we moved here a few years ago we liked what we saw and don't want it to change, or we don't want that sort of store up here. It doesn't fit our lifestyle, etc, etc". None of that was heard yesterday. Yesterday was mostrly confind to to "safety" concerns. The Facebook comments paint a different picture. Many oppose Dollar General only for political reasons. It's a corporation, and left wing socialists despise free enterprise and capitaism. They want the all controlling government, county in this case, to decide where you can shop, what goods can be sold, and how and when you can spend your money. The other group are the newly arrived or long time residing "elites". They want botique shopping and dinning, and they don't want anything that openly shows that Amador is a low income area. An area that Dollar General knows will be sucessful for its business plan. Even Ms Morgan yesterday made the off hand remark that she would be fine with a "Starbucks". She doesn't understand that not everyone is as well off as she. The Pine Grove Dollar General's parking lot is full of cars driven by many low income retirees or heads of families looking for Folgers on sale. These people don't say a lot, but how they spend their money and where is their vote, and I'm sure there will be cars in the Buckhorn Dollar General lot. Let the competition begin.