Reply #7: Wal-Mart's moving into my neighborhood.

[BJ]

The background is this: in the late Sixties a "strip mall" was build in a slough at the intersection of two major city streets. Because the natural wetland was disturbed and paved over areas within the strip mall's vicinity regularly flooded.

This had been the state of things for nearly thirty years.

Then in 1998 a developer from Flordia purchased said strip mall property, most the stores long since vacant, with the promise of a new mall. Accordingly the city coughed-up $4.4 million for a massive water drainage and retention system to keep said property above water after a light rain.

In 2000, after the city council offered a generous "incentive package", word came from the developer that neither Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes or Home Depot were interested in building at said site because they had stores or were planning new stores with the area.

In the 2003 city council election the incumbent councilman, known for his petty corruption, accounced he would not seek another term. The result was a win by the vice-president/treasurer of a large regional dairy.

2004 suddenly Wal-Mart sees fit to build a new Supercenter in the vacant slough even though it is only three miles from an existing Wal-Mart Supercenter!

The difference?

Our new city councilman is a registered Republican.