Economic Development Director Al Martinez’ comment about
anti-growth policy being the
”
kiss of death
”
for a community is right on. Local leaders can learn much from
Gilroy’s mistakes, where in 25 years of practicing law I’ve seen
many more failures and bankruptcies than small business would
normally suffer.
Editor,
Economic Development Director Al Martinez’ comment about anti-growth policy being the “kiss of death” for a community is right on. Local leaders can learn much from Gilroy’s mistakes, where in 25 years of practicing law I’ve seen many more failures and bankruptcies than small business would normally suffer.
The discriminatory treatment by Gilroy’s leaders – granting incentives and tax breaks to huge corporations developing on the east side or US 101, while on the west side doing nothing much but build the tax-consuming Black Hole Transit Hub at the old depot and paving over the Garden Valley Foods cannery site – helped generate small business insolvencies and bankruptcies for which nobody in government takes rightful credit.
Will San Benito County be guilty of the same stab-your-local-small-business-owner-in-the-back-and-grant-international-conglomerates-tax-breaks-and-incentives-policies as Gilroy’s leaders have done in the past two and one-half decades?
United Pacific offered to assist SBC with rail-oriented economic development, at their forum for Northern California local government leaders, and has spent more than $2 million refurbishing the Hollister Branch Line to upgrade our rail artery lifeline with the North American rail network.
Such rail-oriented commercial development is being frozen-out of Gilroy as it builds low-income apartments and arch-socialist Rod Diridon’s “train museum” on prime rail-adjacent business sites.
We could, if we had the leadership, capitalize on Gilroy’s mistakes. Do we have the leadership?
Agriculture without economic transportation is merely subsistence farming, but, combined with the low freight rates rail affords shippers and receivers, it can be profitable. But we need ag-rail favorable development, which would bring good paying jobs, not minimum wage retailers like Wal-Mart. What are local leaders doing to promote ag-friendly transport solutions? To keep the last remaining cannery on the Central California Coast?
If we mimic Gilroy, we’ll lose the cannery, and then we’ll lose the Hollister Branch Line, too.
I think anti-business policies have gone too far. It is time to build jobs right here in SBC, and that takes commerce and industry. Ag is our No. 1 industry and employer. It will do us no good to preserve farmland if we kill off all the farmers.
Caveat Viator!
Joseph P. Thompson, Tres Pinos
