The Bastrop Advertiser (Bastrop, Tex.), Vol. [154], No. [96], Ed. 1 Saturday, January 26, 2008 Page: 3 of 15
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Page 4A ★ lD\t Bastrop Idocrtiscr
Saturday, January 26,2008 u
Issues & Opinions
Letters To
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ABITRAPICAl,
MAYBE-BUTA REAL
STIMULUS FORTH
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Big box 'swindle' showing up in Bastrop
Dear Editor:
With the ink barely dry on the city and
county agreements to fund part of the
development of Burleson Crossing, the
bulldozers and other heavy equipment are
preparing yet another patch of Bastrop
farm land for "big box" sprawl retail
development.
I was originally opposed to the project
due to the blending of tax money with
corporate funds to produce a retail shop-
ping center. After reading the book "Big
Box Swindle" by Stacy Mitchell, I see the
damage to Bastrop may be worse titan the
potential waste of several million in tax
dollars.
The subtitle of the book is "The True
Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for
America's Independent Businesses." The
book sites city after city devastated by
big box retailers such as Wal-Mart, Home
Depot, Lowe's, Target and on and on.
Bastrop Economic Development
Corporation CEO Joe Newman stated in
the Austin Business Journal, the project
will be a "win win for everyone." Well
let's just examine the "wins" first.
The win column is easy. The develop-
er, with the help of the Bastrop Economic
Development Corporation, conned our
ignorant politicians to allow the project
to be built mixing our tax dollars with
corporate dollars. That had to make a nice
payday, the amount of which has never
been disclosed. Steve Durhman claimed
"Retail has not kept up with demand in
Bastrop County." The builders of the
project who have little stake in Bastrop
County and the retailers (also who have
little stake in Bastrop) will "night drop"
income from their retail outlets to such cit-
ies as Bentonville, Arkansas; Mooreville,
North Carolina, New York, New York;
Orlando, Florida etc.
The font-runner in the win column has
to be the anchor big box, Lowe's. It gets
to fight on in Bastrop with its archrival,
Home Depot. Lowe's doesn't care so
much if it makes money, but more if it can
chip away at Home Depot profits. Wall
Street measures the "success" of the big
box by the number of stores it opens more
than its income. Employees at the Home
Depot (a big box not without sin) say it
won't be a "win win" for either company.
The other big box retailers should
effectively finish off any and all local
competition since proposed tenants
include Office Max, Best Buy, Barnes
and Noble, Hobby Lobby, Sams, Target
and the list goes on. Even though Bastrop
has 40 or so restaurants within a few
miles of each other, Burleson Crossing
hopes to add one or more of the follow-
ing: Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse
and Red Lobster, to name a few. There is
even hope of a Cinemark or Regal movie
theater which will surely put the Chestnut
Square Complex in the vacant building
category.
Well, it looks like I have wandered
off into the "loser" section already. So
who loses? First off, the community
looses. Gone is die personal interaction
of residents with small business own-
ers who have a real stake in the town.
Remember Main Street? Well it is gone,
and the Burleson Crossing will insure no
retail stone is left for anyone attempting to
open a mom and pop business other than
a gift/candle/antique shop. Eventually
Main will be nothing more than store-
fronts for lawyers, real estate offices and
other venues most people only use once
or twice in their lives. Oh wait, it already
looks like this!
Local businesses always return a laige
percentage of their income back to the
community. They often pay employees
more than the big box retailers and in
some cases purchase goods for sale from
local artisans and the like. Big box retail-
ers almost never purchase local items,
relying more and more on imported goods,
often custom made to their specifications,
from overseas manufacturing plants such
as those found in China and India.
According to one contributor to "Big
Box Swindle," Wal-Mart obtains prod-
ucts for its stores from more than 4,000
factories in China. Recent inspections of
these factories reveal "below minimum
wages being paid, falsified time cards and
brutally long hours."
Suppliers of products to big box retail-
ers are often forced to guarantee sales
even if the lack of sales is not the fault
of the product. Lately big box retailers
are having their own brand of product
manufactured for them in direct competi-
tion with the very items they are selling.
More than a few notable tool and kitchen
product manufacturers have gone under,
pressured by competition from the store
brand.
Joe Newman claims "Retailers and
restaurants rely on traffic counts, not just
rooftops. There's a lot of leakage." He
adds, in the ABJ, "the area stands to ben-
efit from the sales tax dollars that more
retail will generate. We try to keep prop-
erty tax down, so we need retailers in here
for revenue stream."
Guess Joe hasn't checked the rise of
Austin property taxes even though they
have built big box retail at nearly every
major intersection. Newman's statement
of "trying to keep property tax down," is a
myth if not a complete fabrication.
Several paragraphs taken from "Big
Box Swindle" appeared to be written for
Bastrop.
"Taxpayers end up footing the bill for
big-box retailers in other ways as well.
Although many cities assume that con-
verting farmland and open space to shop-
ping centers will yield a financial windfall
and reduce levies on house owners, die
tax benefits promised by developers in
many cases prove to be as illusory as are
die employment gains. Focused on only
one side of the equation -growing the tax
base-many cities have lost sight of die
fact that development also creates costs.
These costs are quite high in the case of
sprawling big-box stores~so high that
diey can reduce die tax gains to a negli-
gible trickle or even result in a net loss
for the city.
"One frequently overlooked cost is
die effect big-box stores have on exist-
ing property values. Nearby homes may
lose value due to die added traffic and
noise, but more significant are the effects
on existing commercial property. As
downtown and older shopping centers
lose sales, they also decline in value and
ultimately produce less tax revenue. In
an analysis of the impact of Wal-Mart's
arrival on several Iowa towns found that
most of the superstores' revenue (84 per-
cent) came at die expense of other busi-
nesses, many of which closed. These
dead downtowns and derelict strip malls
(thousands of which now litter the coun-
try) also represent a tremendous waste of
public investment in the form of roads,
water lines, utilities and die like diat are
sitting idle or underutilized while taxpay-
ers build still more Infrastructure to serve
new big-box complexes.
"Police expenses are anodier factor.
This is partly because, as traffic increases,
officers must spend more time patrol-
ling roads, issuing traffic citations and
responding to accidents. But some big-
box stores also generate an exceptionally
Not forgetting
Hernandez ' care
for the community
large volume of police calls for crimes
like shoplifting and check fraud. Many
cities are unprepared for diis. In Royal
Palm Beach, Florida, the arrival of Home
Depot, Lowe's, Wal-Mart and other chains
along a state highway resulted in 1500
additional police calls.
"In states where cities derive die major-
ity of their revenue from property taxes, as
is the case in Massachusetts, sprawling
retail centers are more often financial
losers for local governments, The same is
true for cities that depend on local income
taxes, as communities in Ohio do. Case
studies in Dublin, Delaware and other
Ohio cities have found retail development
to be a net drain, because its low wage
jobs produce little revenue relative to its
high public image."
The environment is also a big loser to
die big box retailer. Water runoff from
big box retail centers is one of die lead-
ing sources of pollution according to die
Center for Watershed Protection. Notiiing
delivers more pollution faster tiian run off
from big box parking lots. Even tiiough
diey may plant a few trees and install a
park bench or a holding pond, you still
have to get to them by car. Did anyone
do any ground water contamination stud-
ies? Where does die water runoff from
Bastrop's big box retail center go? Could
it end up in the Colorado River after one
of our heavy rains? Even after a big box
is abandoned, its parking lot runoff con-
tinues to pollute and Lowe's has closed 30
stores recently.
Given die present 27-year downturn
in new home construction and the low-
est retail sales growtii in six years, one
has to wonder what was the motivation
behind die rush to tiirow up another big
box center? One has to wonder about die
whole government/business deal given
die recent official corruption convictions
in Bastrop.
In reality, it is just probably an expen-
sive case of stupidly. The snow job by
die developers and tiieir local lackeys
at die Bastrop Economic Development
Corporation and Chamber of Commerce
must have bowled them over, kinda
like our US Senators and Congressional
Representatives being "misled" when it
came to attacking Iraq.
The Bastrop Economic Development
Corporations May 2007 newsletter touts
"Bastrop EDC Has Best Year Yet." I
wonder if diey are referring to die bribing
of a business from nearby Flatonia and
Giddings with the gift of "free land" as
something to be proud of? There weren't
any comments concerning jobs and busi-
nesses that have closed their doors in
Bastrop in 2007.
I called each city and diey didn't sound
too happy BEDC had stolen their busi-
nesses even though the revenues from
diese venues were microscopic. It is
also doubtfi.il employees will move from
Giddings and Flatonia to Bastrop, com-
pounding Bastrop's traffic woes.
In a short, Bastrop will be unrec-
ognizable from any other city of its
size in America. Every big box retailer
has basically the same goal. Destroy
die competition and make money for
die stockholders. If a town dies in the
"race to die bottom line," that is just too
bad. The small old town of Bastrop
will just be a memory, swallowed up
by the big box looking to make the big
bucks. Better take some pictures of
Main Street because just like the glaciers
in Montana's Glacier National Park, it
might not be there tomorrow.
Vic Vreeland
Cedar Creek
Dear Editor:
In the past few months we
have all watched as indict-
ments were handed down and
punishments were given out.
I write this letter, not with
the intention of stirring up a
debate about the charges or
punishments, but to remind us
of what Richard Hernandez
meant to his friends and sup-
porters.
Life is full of decisions,
and we all have made some
bad choices at one time
or another. Lord knows, I
have made my share of bad
decisions. Richard made
some bad decisions, and lie
is being punished for them.
Richard stood up like a man
and is taking the punishment
that the A.G.'s office handed
down.
I have known Richard
for about 20 years. I work
with Richard's wife, and I
know all of his children well.
There is no doubt that it has
been very painful for his wife
and children.
Richard was more than
just our sheriff. He is my
friend and a friend to many of
you here in Bastrop County.
If you know Richard, you
know how big his heart is.
I can't begin to name all the
benefits and charities that
Richard has donated his time
to during his career here in
Bastrop Count}'.
Even after Richard was
indicted and had resigned as
sheriff of Bastrop County,
he was asked by the Boys
and Girls Club to step in
and cater their Benefit Gold
Tournament. Apparently
the caterer the Boy's and
Girl's Club had backed
out at the last minute, and
Richard stepped in with less
than 36 hours notice to help
the Boy's and Girl's Club
out at no charge. Richard
did this not as sheriff of
Bastrop County but as
Richard Hernandez the con-
cerned, big hearted, friend
that I know so well.
What's done is done.
Richard wants nothing more
than to move on with his life.
Richard is my friend and he
always will be. If you con-
sider him a friend, don't be
shy to say hello or thank him
for the time he dedicated to
all of us. He deserves it
PS. Richard, anytime you
want to barbecue and drink a
cold beer, you call me. I will
be there.
Robert Jenkins
Bastrop
f he Bastrop idocrtiscr
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McAuley, Davis. The Bastrop Advertiser (Bastrop, Tex.), Vol. [154], No. [96], Ed. 1 Saturday, January 26, 2008, newspaper, January 26, 2008; Bastrop, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth252415/m1/3/: accessed June 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Bastrop Public Library.