How is the election over WalMart in Ventura shaping up? Will it be the dominate issue
in the Ventura City elections? I don't live in Ventura but I think it will be the most covered issue with each candidate being asked questions and their opinions on the subject.
If the proposed expansion is a referendum on WalMart I think the Bentonville corporation will be allowed to build. But if they can convince people they can support WalMart, but oppose this specific location or project somehow it will turn out different.
The question I also have is who locally will work for each side in the debate. Any progressive politicians, consultants, or activists that support the store will have to face their allies for supporting WalMart. Conservatives that support it will make themselves a target for well funded and energetic unions.
For a background on the subject my friend Marie Lakin, the blogger behind Making Waves, has written extensively on it. Click here to see what she has written on the subject.
Here is an interesting article that will get anti-WalMart activists talking:
Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.
Click here for the story.
Brian,
No doubt, WalMart will be a primary topic of the November 2009 City Council election and all candidates will be asked to weigh in on the issue during the campaign. I have long supported WalMart's desire to build a store in the City at whatever location they feel is most appropriate, including the Victoria Avenue site, as long as they comply with the City's development standards, including traffic and parking mitigation measures, building design considerations, etc.
WalMart can be a successful addition to the City, providing significant sales tax revenue to support public safety needs as well as offering discount shopping opportunities for its residents. I believe the efforts of the anti-WalMart coalition are shortsighted and conflict with the free market system that this country was founded upon. I think the voters in the City will recognize this as well and vote this measure down.
Having said all of this, there are many other very important issues, besides WalMart, the City will be struggling with in the future, including the City budget, additional police and fire resources, future development, etc. The City Council elections will provide a great opportunity for much debate and dialogue throughout the community over these issues and I look forward very much to being part of this discussion.
Mike,
Are you thinking of starting a PAC or an IE to support WalMart's plans? Do you think they will be able to generate grassroots support?
I don't doubt many would support the store being built but there is a difference in the intensity a human rights activist or a UFCW member would be against the store and the intensity a potential shopper might bring to the debate.
Everyone I talk to thinks Wal-Mart will just move into the existing K-Mart space and stay under the limit allowed in the anti-big box initiative and there is nothing anyone can do about that. They can't go over 100,000 square feet there anyway, because of the city's coding for that area which needs to conform to our citizen-generated General Plan.
It all may end up being pretty moot.
Marie has an excellent point and this may very well be the way WalMart decides to go, which would be fine with me. Even a non-Super Center sized WalMart would be an enormous improvement over a vacant shopping center, which is what we have now.
Not only is it sitting fallow and not generating taxes and jobs for the City, but it has been a magnet for the homeless (who have taken up residence in and around the building) and has already become a target for graffiti and vandalism.
Brian, I don't think a PAC or an IE to support WalMart will be necessary. I think, in the end, common sense and the free market will prevail and we will see something go in at that site that will be a benefit to the City.
Marie has an excellent point and this may very well be the way WalMart decides to go, which would be fine with me. Even a non-Super Center sized WalMart would be an enormous improvement over a vacant shopping center, which is what we have now.
Not only is it sitting fallow and not generating taxes and jobs for the City, but it has been a magnet for the homeless (who have taken up residence in and around the building) and has already become a target for graffiti and vandalism.
Brian, I don't think a PAC or an IE to support WalMart will be necessary. I think, in the end, common sense and the free market will prevail and we will see something go in at that site that will be a benefit to the City.
Not much to add about Ventura's WalMart.
A few years ago I had the great opportunity to visit Gettysburg along with Mannasas, and Harper's Ferry. While I am a WalMart shopper, historical preservation within reason is very important to me.
I still have a personal goal to visit Appomattox courthouse, Chancellorsville, Antietam, Shiloh, Cold Harbor, Fredericksburg, Ft. Sumter, and Vicksburg.
Anyway, I just joined as a member The Civil War Preservation Trust. Apparently, they participate in the free market by buying the land in question at market prices and work to create a long term preservation of the civil war battlefields.
Thanks Brian for the story on such a positive charity.
Leave a link to it and I will bring more attention to the charity.
Has anyone compared Walmart and Target's prices? Walmart will also take back things that break or you change your mind on the purchase even when you lose a receipt!
The inevitability of Walmart moving in to pretty much ever area is a guarantee especially when the economy is tanking, Walmart is the goliath to small mom and pop stores but then again market change is a given. Unless these small shops offer products and services that are unique they are going to become extinct.
This is a bad thing in the short term (empty shops and such) but in the long term it is good for the economy.
The only bad thing and this hits the core of our countries economy and wellbeing is that a large percentage of products sold by walmart (and other large companies) are imported from foreign countries. So these large companies are actually supporting these foreign countries at the expense of the US economy.
This is what costs jobs and why jobs are going away. I just wish that the MADE IN THE USA would once again mean something. Now its all about making the money and lowering the costs at the expense of product quality and safety and American jobs.
Even Rome fell, I would hate to see the USA become hostage to a foreign country due to its reliance on the products we import from them. Like I have always said when people get higher up in the ladder of Govt, or companies common sense seems to go out the window to be replaced with the right now picture, with no concern of the long term.
The bloomin' City of Ventura will not live or die on whether WalMart comes to town or not. That's for sure. This just seems like one of those hopes that MAY provide jobs in a weakened economy and maybe, yeah, it will serve as a beacon of light for a City that seems so lost, right now, WHO KNOWS? Well, I don't know about you, but I'm certainly willing to give it a try.
Aaron Rios, bring your latest plan. We, the community, are all eyes and ears... Don't bring it to the powers that be/the city fathers at this stage because they'll juts run it into the ground with bureaucratese that will scare you all the way back to Bentonville.
Some of us can only afford products made in other countries when given two choices, made is USA is too expensive!