[Vision2020] Walmart

[Pat Kraut]

If paradise ridge continues to sell jazz and can order specific ones then
they have it all over WM. Wal-Mart orders hundreds of the same one and if
that isn't the one you want go to Hastings or PR for special orders WM
cannot. WM is not into health stuff like the co op and won't really compete
with them.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <joekc at adelphia.net>
To: "Bruce and Jean Livingston" <jeanlivingston at turbonet.com>
Cc: <nchaney at ci.moscow.id.us>; <blambert at ci.moscow.id.us>;
<vision2020 at moscow.com>; "john dickinson" <JohnDickinson at moscow.com>;
<jweber at ci.moscow.id.us>; <bstout at ci.moscow.id.us>; "linda pall"
<lpall at moscow.com>; "Jeff Harkins" <jeffh at moscow.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 7:34 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Walmart


Great post, Bruce!

One point that you mention below is related to a point that I was trying to
make with yesterday's post. Sure we 'vote with our feet' but our votes often
have consequences that are unintended. Perhaps you like Paradise Ridge and
promise to continue to go there long after the Super Wal-Mart enters town.
But once you start buying your food, clothing, gas, tires, and home supplies
at the Super Wal-Mart you realize that it is too inconvenient to truck on
down to Paradise Ridge, so you end up buying your CD's there, too. This is
why places go out of business and towns change when a Super Wal-Mart moves
in. It is not that people intend for that to happen, it just does. Sure they
vote for it with there feet but it is not a reflective, conscious choice but
a consequence of convenience.

I'm not asking folks to buy their CD's at Paradise Ridge -- though it is a
great CD store, with a much better collection of jazz, for instance, than
any other store in town. It isn't about my personal choices but about
personal, individual choice in general. And it is about long-term reflective
choices instead of quick unreflective ones.

The point is that we need to reflect now on what changes a Supercenter will
have on our town and whether or not those are the changes that we truly
desire. What are the stores where you currently shop and what motivation
would you have to continue going there once low-cost and convenience moves
to town? I doubt that low-cost and convenience are the most important values
for any of us but once the Super Wal-Mart moves in those are the values that
your feet will be voting for. And in the process you will turn Moscow into
Anytown, USA, e.g., all of the other places you chose not to live.

Joe Campbell

---- Bruce and Jean Livingston <jeanlivingston at turbonet.com> wrote:
> Jeff,
>
> I agree with what you say about the simplicity of your cash register
model -- consumers must want it because they are spending money there -- but
I think you are leaving something out.
>
> Sure, consumers may support Wal-Mart with their dollars, but the community
may be bearing other costs that are not factored into the simple buy-sell
relationship with the consumers that you describe.  Local taxpayers have a
different relationship with Wal-Mart, as does our local non-profit hospital
and the citizens who have to navigate through the increased traffic
generated by a Supercenter.  The affected economic and other relationships
of all community members, not just the shoppers, ought to be equally
significant to our decision on whether and on what terms to recruit
Wal-Mart.
>
> We ought to protect those other relationships through a Big Box ordinance.
We should do so by requiring Wal-Mart (or any such large retailer that
wishes to come here) to cover all of its "external" costs, those costs that
are more typically dumped on the community Wal-Mart "serves," such as the
increased demands on police protection, water consumption, traffic and
related infrastructure changes, sewer expenses, uninsured medical expenses
(that will be borne by Gritman), lighting poluution, etc.
>
> Nor are all retailers equal.  The costs to the community of having a
particular retailer are not the same.
>
> In Butch Alford's talk to the LEDC today, he answered a Walter Steed
question, something about "Valley Vision" (Lewiston-Clarkson's equivalent to
the LEDC) and its experience with (and the desirability/value of) big box
retail to the community, by noting that all retailers are not the same and
that Costco pays very well -- real living wages -- and is an extremely
generous member of the Valley community.  I believe he was pointedly
distinguishing between Wal-Mart and Costco, in that instance, as two
entirely different quality citizens.  The "citizenship" factors of our
corporate big box retailers are not measured merely by the transactions at
the cash register.  The various other factors that result from their entry
in our community should all be part of the package of issues that our
community considers and pursues, by requiring more from any big box retailer
that seeks to open a new store in town than that they simply pay their
property taxes.
>
> Now, I do not support drafting a law peculiar to Wal-Mart, even though I
find its practices, as I understand them, offensive.  But it seems to me
that we as a community ought to write our laws in a way that we get
retailers who are willing to meet our reasonable but high standards.
Frankly, given the seeming desirability of our community, we ought to be
able to extract some real benefit to the community in return for the right
to locate here and saddle us with traffic congestion, etc.   Among those
benefits imposed on/extracted from any such new retailer ought to be: a
living wage, for example; and substantially more green space in the 1000
space parking lot to avoid polluting Paradise Creek while also enabling
better water recharge of the limited aquifer; as well as architectural and
lighting design standards; guarantees not to leave buildings vacant; etc.
etc.
>
> Another angle that I have not seen discussed is on another of your
favorite issues: consumer choice.  I fear that a Super Wal-Mart will reduce
that choice, not only by the gloom and doom tales of a shuttered Main
Street, but by the simpler difference that Wal-Mart's preemptive, predatory
opening of a Supercenter is seemingly designed to keep out other retailers.
>
> Isn't consumer choice enabled by doing our best to "hire", ok, attract,
better citizen, retailing neighbors than Wal-Mart, an admittedly "naughty,"
law-violating, discriminatory corporate behemoth?  We have a Wal-Mart.
Isn't consumer choice greater if we retain the Wal-Mart we have and
encourage a different choice to locate here?  And if that new store, while
offering a different product line, is a better citizen of the community and
foists fewer external costs on the community, are we not better off?  We
have a relatively small population, and why wouldn't we want to encourage
someone else in the retail industry who (unlike Wal-Mart, if the literature
is true) is willing to pay living wages, if we choose to make that part of
the ground rules to play here, for example?
>
> Everyone seems to assume that we will lose our Wal-Mart to Pullman, which
I think is absurd.  We already HAVE a Wal-Mart, which is a point that Steve
Cooke left out of his presentation the other night at the MCA forum on the
economic benefits of Wal-Mart.  Apparently, the powers that be in Benton
Arkansas are making so much money on their 90,000 sq. ft. store in Moscow,
Idaho that they feel the upgrade to a 228,000 sq. ft. store here is a wise
decision in their economic interest.  I have to believe that if they decide
not to meet our requirements under a Big Box ordinance, and therefore choose
not to expand, that they will still retain their "grandfathered" and
profitable current store, rather than abdicate the market.
>
> I encourage us all to think how best we might write a Big Box ordinance
that will deal with the costs of these new stores which seemingly wish to
locate here.
>
> And until we have a big box ordinance "with teeth" in place, unlike the
emergency ordinance under which Wal-Mart seeks to play, I suggest to our
City Council that you deny the necessary re-zone at this time, because it is
not in our long term interest to allow such a significant new addition to
our community under a vague, rushed, and temporary, "emergency big box
ordinance" that Wal-Mart with its huge economic power can litigate to death
until we cave to the expense of litigation and let it have its way.  I think
the existence of an unsatisfactory regulatory mechanism for the desired use,
along with avoidance of litigation of an ambiguous emergency ordinance is
reason enough to deny the re-zone.
>
> And frankly, I don't understand why we would cut-off from expansion our
Alturas technology park.  Alturas was built at our expense for the
attraction of living wage jobs.  Why should we limit its potential expansion
and simultaneously hand that infrastructure to a new Big Box, especially one
that is a less than stellar corporate citizen, when the obvious place for
Big Box zoning in our community is along Hwy 95, to the south of town near
JJ's?
>
> Bruce Livingston
>
>
>
>
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Jeff Harkins
>   To: Shelly ; vision2020 at moscow.com
>   Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:53 PM
>   Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Walmart
>
>
>   Phil, you have a very interesting view of the economics of
retailing/merchandising.
>
>   In a free-enterprise, free market economy, businesses survive or die by
counting the votes (spell that dollars!) of their customers.  The model is
simple - if you don't like a store don't shop there.  If enough customers
shop at a store, it will do well - but you still don't have to go there.
Obviously a lot of people shop at the Moscow Walmart - the store is quite
successful, customers have voted with their dollars and Moscow seems to have
survived the current Walmart Store.  I have lived here almost 30 years now
and the shopping in Moscow has never provided as much choice or diversity.
Where is the devastation in this picture?
>
>   Why do you think you should be able to dictate where people shop?
Sounds like you are advocating the good old "company store" model where you
are the company.
>
>   I wonder how you would feel about Albertson's placing a store here?  How
would you feel about Safeway offering gasoline? How would you respond to
Target or Fred Meyer or Walgreens locating here?  Would you support a Lowe's
or Home Depot or 84 Lumber?  Would you support TriState expanding their
limited food offerings to a full-fledged grocery store?
>
>   I am not trying to be argumentative - I am really trying to understand
where you are coming from.
>
>   At 11:57 AM 1/11/2006, you wrote:
>
>     I know the best way in the world to satisfy the majority, where we are
in a democracy, where the majority rules and the rest of us just grin and
bear it. I think Walmart proposal should be put to the vote of the people
and Walmart should pay for it. Since it will be financially devastating to
our community.
>
>     BJ who understands economics has warned everybody of the devastation
that is about to become. If Walmart does what it plans on doing. I have said
similar things. Charts, graphs, factual information also says the same
thing. I think us as the people of Moscow should have the right to vote in
our own death warrant.
>
>     -Phil Roderick
>
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_____________________________________________________
 List services made available by First Step Internet,
 serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
               http://www.fsr.net
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