The Small Town Project

The Small Town Project is pleased to announce we’ve arranged to bring to Mount Vernon the upcoming film, WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price. It’s produced and directed by Robert Greenwald, whose past credits include Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.

The movie will show at the Bijou on Monday, November 14, at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are priced at $1 to help cover the cost of the theatre. The concession stand will be open, so ready yourself for popcorn, Milk-Duds, and Grape Nehi! (Just kiddin’ about the Nehi :cry:)

For advance tickets either call John or Nanci Feeney in MV, or contact us through the “Questions? Email the Host” link on the movie website to find out where to pick up your tickets. For anyone living outside MV and Lisbon, we will have a small “will call” list to enable you to pick up your tickets at show time.

UPDATE: I’m pleased to let you know I’ve just learned there will be another local showing of the film. It will be shown at Cornell College, in the movie theatre section of the Ratt in the Commons building, on Tuesday, November 15 at 7:00 pm. And this showing is free. You now have no excuse for not seeing this important film!

By the way, WalMart is taking this film very seriously. They’ve even created their own “war room” in large part in response to this movie!

UPDATE #2:Mary Vermillion, author of Death by Discount, a mystery novel about the impact of WalMart on a small town in Iowa, had hoped to be at the showing. Unfortunately she has had to cancel, but she has sent information on her book, and we’ll make it available!

See you there!

Image source: The New York Times

In Bolinas, California (pop. 1,600) the “urge to remain pristine has led to one of the most extreme anti-growth policies in the nation.” In 1971, Bolinas simply quit issuing new water meters, without which new houses could not be built. Their moratorium on new meters has been in effect ever since, effectively preventing all new development.
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We began in our last article to introduce the concept of sustainable development. Recall the Brundtland Report’s definition:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

This implies an emphasis on stewardship and conservation of land and other natural resources. Applied to community development, it leads to ideas which, while rooted in or mimicking the same environmentally conscious practices, can surprise us with their simple yet innovative applicability to local business and other areas of community life.

Its roots in environmental stewardship lead sustainable economic development to innovative solutions for the economies of small towns.

What’s more, these tools require no physical expansion on the part of the community. They help a town improve its economy, indeed its community as a whole, without physical growth. This is a huge plus as we’ve seen how such growth is typically harmful to an already mature community.

Sustainable forms of development are also just what their name suggests: They’re capable of being continued indefinitely. Physical growth, just like the burning of fossil fuels, is not.
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[Update: Instead of saying “No Comments,” the link for adding your comments now says, “Add Comment” until someone adds a comment.” Hopefully that will be clearer for everyone. :)]

Hey folks, some of you may not fully realize you can add your own comments on nearly any post/article on this site. Just below the end of an article, you will see a line saying, “No Comments” “Add Comment” or “3 Comments” or what have you. That tells you how many comments there are so far on that article. At the end of the article you’ll find the box in which you can write and submit a comment. The comment option is there to generate discussion. (though a quick, “Hi John. Just looking at your site” - or whatever - is encouraged too!) Only if you see, “Comments are closed,” are you unable to comment. For a regular article, though, comments will typically only close after it’s been posted for a month or more. By default, your first comment is held for moderation, so it may take a while to appear. (see the “Comment Policy” in the sidebar.) Thanks!

Recall that residential construction costs us
In Exploding the Big Myth, we began to see that growth through residential development does not offer the economic boost claimed by its advocates. Indeed, we showed that such development nearly always costs more in services than it generates in new tax dollars. Let’s be totally clear on this: Ongoing residential development will raise your taxes. ( “Taxes” in this case include primarily state income tax, property taxes, bond issues, a variety of possible special tax levies, and potentially certain sales taxes.) To the extent possible, the surplus revenues from farmland, open land, and commercial property make up for the deficit created by residential development. But they can’t work miracles. Tax increases seem inevitabley to come along, and to a large extent you can blame the growing deficit created by ongoing residential development. More importantly, without it, those revenues from other land uses could be put toward needed community projects! We looked at a bit of the extensive “cost of community services” data to support this, and we’ll examine other supporting data in future articles.

Signs of things to come in the Novak development outside Lisbon.

In our area, we’ve already seen some of these increased tax levies. In MV, for example, the growing population has caused over-crowded schools, and the $8.9 million bond issue for the new high school was the result. Thankfully, one of our great strengths here is our passion for education, and we enthusiastically passed the bond issue. It’s not hard to see, though, that had the schools not been bursting at the seams, it might not have been necessary to begin with.
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