Last week, M. Hayes wrote a letter claiming he/she knows this is a capitalistic society, and then proceeds to prove she/he has no clue. Anyone who passed junior high government 101 knows government can’t dictate to private commercial landowners what they can charge their commercial tenants so long as they are not breaking any laws. Hayes apparently prefers a communist society where government can just dictate to everyone in order to gratify its needs.
City Council did it the right way. It bought the Chili Cook-off and rented out the lumberyard site with the condition that guarantees a percentage of the space must be reserved for local business at below market price.
We have been fought to preserve our freedoms. Hayes should go back to school and take a course in constitutional rights. Or, better yet, Hayes might benefit from a course in economics and then face the fact that if the city had not purchased the Chili Cook-off, it would have been developed into a shopping center, adding competition and hence lower rents. So, that is the choice-more development, more competition equals lower rents. Or buy the land, make it a park and minimize development, which means less competition and higher rents. Which is it, more development or more open space? Make a choice and live with it because you can’t have it both ways.
M. Wilson