MERCED COUNTY, CA: WE’LL SETTLE FOR WAL-MART JOBS
Our View: Let Wal-Mart build center [Merced Sun Star (Calif.)]
Distribution facility may not offer high-paying work, but Merced County can fill the jobs.
There’s not a city in California—or the nation—that doesn’t covet lots of high-paying jobs in clean industries. Simply put, that’s the brass ring we’re all reaching for.
It’s even more important here in the Valley that we attract these types of jobs as a way to battle our chronic poverty and increasingly polluted air.
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, wants to build a facility in Merced to distribute goods to stores in the region. Wal-Mart isn’t known for paying high salaries and the trucks used to transport the merchandise spew pollutants into our already dirty air. In short, this isn’t the brass ring.
But let’s be practical. Our work force doesn’t qualify for brass-ring jobs. Yes, folks can move here to work in those high-paying, environmentally friendly jobs but there aren’t any of those on the horizon. What about the people already living here who need work?
Merced suffers chronic high unemployment and low education attainment, which adds up to crippling poverty. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We have plenty of people willing to do so. Let’s build the distribution center.
Our civic leaders need to do a better job at attracting those high-paying jobs in clean industries. But until that happens, companies like Wal-Mart should be permitted to set up shop here.
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Posted by Joel Nezianya on Monday, July 28 | 0 comments | Permalink
Ventura, CA. Wal-Mart Opponents Ready For November, 2009 Ballot
How big is too big? The voters in Ventura, California will get the chance to answer that question. On January 31, 2008, Sprawl-Busters reported that citizens in Ventura had waited for months for their elected officials to clamp down on superstore development. Now they are going to take that issue directly to the voters to get what they want. A coalition of citizen and labor groups announced on January 30th that they were filing a ballot initiative to ban any grocery stores larger than 90,000 s.f. They held a press conference in front of the empty Kmart store that Wal-Mart wants to tear down and replace with a supercenter. “It’s our city. It’s our choice,” a spokesman for Livable Ventura, one of the groups backing the initiative, told the Ventura County Star. “The voice of the people is going to decide this issue.” Just by filing the ballot question, the group will block any superstore project that is submitted during the next sixteen months, because the ballot measure, which was originally expected to appear on the November 4, 2008 ballot, now may not appear until November of 2009. To get on the ballot, the groups had to collect more than 8,900 signatures by May 16th. That’s roughly 15% of the registered voters in Ventura. When Wal-Mart takes issues to the ballot, it hires signature gatherers. Livable Ventura relied on door to door volunteers.
The groups will also have to expect to be seriously outspent during the run-up to the election. Wal-Mart has been known to spend $250,000 to $500,000 on a single ballot question. The initiative as drafted would define a “superstore” as any building in excess of 90,000 s.f. that devotes more than 3% of the sales floor to nontaxable grocery items.
Wal-Mart superstores typically devote 40% or more of their floorspace to groceries. “It doesn’t ban a Target, or a Best Buy or J.C. Penney,” a spokesman for the coalition of groups told the newspaper. Wal-Mart’s reaction to the announcement of a ballot initiative was not surprising. “We’re disappointed in their decision to pursue further ways to keep us out of the community.”
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, July 28 | 0 comments | Permalink
Lodi, CA. After Six Years, Wal-Mart Still Stuck In Lodi.
Wal-Mart says its not “dormant” in Lodi, California---but after six years of waiting---who can blame the retailer for dozing off? On August 18, 2007, nearly one year ago, Sprawl-Busters reported that Wal-Mart was still stuck in Lodi again. After six years, Wal-Mart has yet to begun work on its proposed supercenter. We noted on February 16, 2007, that a San Joaquin County judge had overturned the city of Lodi’s approval of a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The judge ruled that the company’s environmental impact report (EIR) failed to take into account the impact of other Wal-Mart stores and energy consumption. In response to a lawsuit filed by Attorney Steve Herum and the group Lodi First in March, 2005, the judge ruled that the city’s EIR left out how the new supercenter would affect Lodi, given the fact that there are already two other Wal-Mart supercenters nearby. This Wal-Mart project was originally proposed in September of 2002, and was not approved until February of 2005 on a 3-1 vote of the City Council.
After the judge’s ruling, Lodi officials decided to charge Wal-Mart and its developer, Darryl Browman, a ‘big box’ development fee, which would run $4.50 per square foot, to offset losses that downtown businesses could face if the 226,868 s.f. supercenter opens.
A number of neighboring communities, like Stockton, Galt and Elk Grove have all voted to limit the size of superstores. Stockton has voted to ban superstores larger than 100,000 sf. with major grocery store square footage. Lodi has resisted putting a cap on store size, because voters there rejected Measure R, a 125,000 s.f. cap in November of 2004. The proposed Wal-Mart supercenter would be built right across the street from an existing Wal-Mart, which would close. “We had a vote,” then-Mayor Bob Johnson told the Lodi News-Sentinel. “Am I supposed to second guess the citizenry?” The city’s “downtown impact fee” at $4.50 per square foot, would generate just over $1 million. Officials said this money would be used for new business loans, employee training, and other programs to help downtown businesses. Wal-Mart would also be required to compensate for the loss of agricultural land.
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Posted by Al Norman on Monday, July 28 | 0 comments | Permalink
States Face Massive Budget Shortfalls, Wal-Mart Still Avoids Taxes
An article this week in the Wall Street Journal reports that state legislatures across the country are facing painful budget shortfalls. Reporting from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the article’s author notes that budget deficits are growing as the economy weakens, and legislators don’t know what to do.
We’ve long documented Wal-Mart’s failure to pay its fair share of state taxes - whether it’s by elaborate schemes to avoid property taxes or by forcing a disproportionate number of its employees on to state-sponsored medical plans. Wal-Mart isn’t mentioned in this article from the WSJ, but it certainly deserves to be. The company makes promises to communities it wants to build in, and in exchange townships wind up footing the bill for store construction and forgiving Wal-Mart the tax money it owes. While this certainly isn’t a solution to nationwide community budget shortfalls, it’s one piece of the puzzle local officials need to bear in mind.
States Slammed by Tax Shortfalls [Wall Street Journal]
The stumbling U.S. economy is forcing states to slash spending and cut jobs in order to close a projected $40 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year.
That gap—identified Wednesday in a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures—is more than triple the size of the previous year’s. It is the result of broad economic weakness at the state and local levels that could cause pain throughout this year and into 2010. Sales-tax collections, for example, have been hurt by the housing slump and high gasoline prices, which are prompting cutbacks in consumer spending. Personal income-tax collections have been hit by rising unemployment, while corporate income-tax collections have been eroded by falling profits.
“We expect it to get worse before it gets better,” said Corina Eckl, fiscal-program director of the National Conference of State Legislatures. The conference’s new report describes the shortfalls states face in their budgeting process for the current fiscal year, which began in July.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, July 25 | 38 comments | Permalink
Residents Stand against Wal-Mart in Redlands, CA
Wal-Mart, high school topics of town meeting [Redlands Daily Facts (Calif.)]
Conversation topics ranged from a possible future Wal-Mart to the new Citrus Valley High School at the Community Center Wednesday night as the city held the first town hall meeting of the year.
Mayor Jon Harrison and Councilman Pete Aguilar facilitated the meeting.Presentations were given by the city department heads, including Interim Fire Chief Mitch McKee and Redevelopment Director Dan Hobbs.
The future of the possible Super Wal-Mart was a hot topic during the meeting. Members of the Good Neighbor Coalition, a group devoted to fighting the Wal-Mart project, asked the members of the City Council to take some kind of stand on the issue.
Community Development Department Director Oscar Orci said no application has been filed on behalf of Wal-Mart, though an environmental impact report is under way. Harrison said the council could not yet take a stand on the Wal-Mart project issue. He said a statement now regarding the Wal-Mart could render future council votes invalid.
“If we, as council members, take a position now, before or against, we expose ourselves to being precluded from voting on that,” Harrison said.
Posted by Tony Calero on Friday, July 25 | 0 comments | Permalink
Big-Box Ban in Alameda, CA?
City Council to consider “super store” ban [Contra Costa Times (Calif.)]
The proposal for a flat-out ban on having Kmart, Wal-Mart or other so-called “Super Stores” in Alameda now is set to go before the City Council after bouncing from the Planning Board to the Economic Development Commission.
The idea behind the ban would be to protect local merchants while sending a message to large retailers — which have come under fire for offering workers low wages and few benefits — that the city wants to promote good jobs.
“We don’t have any real prospect of dealing with a Wal-Mart or something like that,” Mayor Beverly Johnson said Thursday. “But I do think it’s good that we have something in place that will set out our policy.”
The proposal calls for amending the Alameda Municipal Code so that a retail store more than 90,000 square feet in size and with more than 10 percent of its floor dedicated to the sale of non-taxable items could not open here.
Oakland, Dublin, Martinez and other cities have similar bans.
The council is expected to consider the issue Aug. 19.
The Planning Board rejected the amendment when it looked at the proposal in June, maintaining the ban could send a message that the city frowns on business and saying officials should instead consider stores on a case-by-case basis.
The board voted unanimously to affirm a current policy that allows the city to nix any store larger than 30,000 square feet if officials think it would hurt the community.
The Economic Development Commission also rejected the ban earlier this month.
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Posted by Tony Calero on Friday, July 25 | 0 comments | Permalink
TALKS PUSHED BACK TO AUGUST IN TRACY, CA
Wal-Mart talks delayed till August [The Record (Calif.)]
A City Council decision on a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter has been postponed again while the city digests more than 400 pages of comments, letters and studies it has received concerning the expansion.
The council originally delayed action at its July 1 meeting until Aug. 5.
The new delay is at the request of the Department of Engineering Services to ensure city staff can review each submission and give them a proper response, according to city spokesman Matt Robinson.
“All of the responses are being studied to see if any information affects the plans submitted by Wal-Mart. Any changes in the scope of work would cause a delay and change of budget the city has set for the analysis,” Robinson said.
A new date for presentation of the item and subsequent findings to the City Council will be set once responses have been made to all the public submissions regarding the Wal-Mart proposal, he said.
Posted by Tony Calero on Thursday, July 24 | 0 comments | Permalink
Give Workers A Break, Not Wal-Mart
Every day, communities across America choose to side with Wal-Mart, the world’s largest corporation, rather than local workers and small businesses. Wake Up Wal-Mart, along with community leaders across the country, are standing and demanding a change. From WakeUpWalMart.com:
Starting today, supporters of WakeUpWalMart.com and local elected officials will hold hundreds of press conferences throughout the country to launch a new campaign “Give Workers a break, not Wal-Mart.” The national effort will call on local officials and candidates at the local, state and federal level to side with workers, not Walmart.
As part of the launch of this new campaign, local WakeUpWalmart.com supporters, elected officials and candidates for office will gather outside Walmart stores to speak out about how the world’s largest retailer stands to profit from John McCain’s tax plan while working Americans continue to struggle in this tough economy. Supporters of WakeUpWalmart.com will hand out flyers to tell Wal-Mart customers how the retail giant stands to save billions under John McCain’s tax plan.
Elected officials, community leaders and candidates will also sign the “Give Workers a Break, Not Wal-Mart Pledge” which calls on John McCain, as well as local and state governments to demand that Wal-Mart end its irresponsible and immoral business practices.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, July 23 | 32 comments | Permalink
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