On Wal-Mart in Fort Atkinson

January 4, 2001

TO Mr. Gordon Day, Jr., Mr. Bill Flood, Mr. Mark Zastrow, Mr. Bruce Johnston, Mr. Loren Gray, Mr. John Wilmet, Mr. Jeff Woods, Mr. Chris Rogers

SUBJECT Growth in general, Wal-Mart in particular

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your decision to stall negotiations with Wal-mart until such time that the planning committee can assess where the city wants to head with the west side. This is a prudent measure, as it spares you and other decision-makers from the reactive position of having to respond to all comers, and puts you more properly in the proactive position of gathering information from your constituents to establish criteria for what is good for Fort Atkinson, and proceeding from there.

I believe it was Mr. Johnston who brought up a philosophical question at the December 19th city council meeting "Is it the job of the city council to influence which companies have a right to operate in the city?" I would say, "Absolutely! The reason the city council exists is to give a measure of a voice to the people of the city, in determining what growth will bring good or ill to the community."

Perhaps you feel commercial growth is best overseen by free market forces, and not by the government. In this case, it is vital that the laws of our free market be strictly followed; Wal-Mart Corp. is currently involved in anti-trust litigation for violating the laws of the free market. There is a class action suit pending in Oregon filed by employees of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc for wage fraud; a judge in Jefferson County, Texas found Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. guilty of "a pattern of false and misleading answers, obfuscation & obstructionism" in his own and other courts attempts at information-gathering. Litigation for OSHA violations against Wal-Mart are too numerous to list.

Since the free market is too slow to check the growth of its players even those playing dirty the role falls to citizens to blow the whistle. The many people who showed up at the Dec. 19th meeting were there to protest Wal-Mart's tactics. Boycotts are underway, but boycotts are after-the-fact measures that cannot stop Wal-Marts from being born.

Even the market should be subject to checks and balances, and I feel the role of city council, in the face of the bald growth of a entity such as Wal-Mart, ought to be that of a check & balance. If elected representatives do not see it as in their jurisdiction to oversee the growth of the area they represent, then it falls, de facto, to the commercial interests themselves. Since commercial interests are not beholden to the good of the people, we are simply "a market," they are not trust-worthy or wise city planners. To cede the discrimination of what constitutes good growth from bad to the laws of the market is to say that our capitalism is more sacred than our democracy.

You'd expect to hear this from the capitalists, but not from you, as the elected agents of our democracy.

My follow-up question to you all is, "Is it the job of the city council to aid and promote a retailer's marketing strategy at the expense of the people they represent?"

Perhaps you are not convinced that the people you represent do not want a Wal-Mart. From my sampling of people, the feeling runs high against. People cite the following reasons with two Wal-Marts already in the county, it is redundant to have a third; Wal-Mart will do here what it has done in thousands of small towns already depress/erode its downtown; Wal-Mart will only give token amounts in charity; Wal-Mart will destroy 20 - 30 acres of land; Wal-Mart brings second jobs, not fair wage jobs; Wal-Mart's appearance brings forth a host of undistinguished growth whose net result is homogeneity of our small towns; increase of traffic congestion; poor quality goods; the bulk of the wealth generated is funneled into out-of-state interests; Wal-Mart promotes over-consumption of resources; Wal-Mart promotes its own interests above those of its employees and the community's; we do not need or want a third grocery store on the west side; Wal-Mart creates no real wealth in that it adds no value to the products it sells; Wal-Mart is aesthetically objectionable; and so on.

However, you may also hear the flip side - Let's have a Wal-Mart here! Wal-Mart is cheap! Great deals! I like shopping there! About 10 per cent of the people I talked to felt positively about a Wal-Mart moving to the west side (except they thought it didn't need to have a grocery store). When I mentioned that Wal-Mart's impact on a local economy has been compared to 100 stores opening all at once on an edge of town, they were concerned. When I told them that Wal-Mart's corporate policy was to price things only as low as that particular market demanded, they were concerned. When I explained that whatever money they thought they saved on the individual items they purchased there were offset by the impulse buys they made there, they laughed in rueful recognition. When I mentioned the infrastructure costs that taxpayers would absorb in Wal-Mart's relocation here, they were deflated.

Wal-Mart itself trumpets the amount of retail taxes it generates; what they don't mention is the amount of retail taxes they suppress, in the loss of revenue of the stores they put under. I've read that in the ten years since Wal-Mart opened in Iowa, a full 50% of their boys and men's clothing stores, and 50% of their GROCERY STORES, and a significant percentage of their drugstores, hardware stores, department stores, have gone out of business. So their claim of tax base growth is illusory; it is, at best, tax base reorganization.

Obviously, we can't push back the hands of time and rewrite the rules of commerce. But we certainly don't have to offer our town up as sacrifice to an out-of-state conglomerate. Thank you very much for your caution in examining Wal-Mart's expansion to Fort Atkinson. It is past time that the whole idea of "growth" in all its forms, gets a thorough review.

Sincerely,

Beth Gehred
Fort Atkinson