Still revisiting the past. This is from 8 Feb 2006 when Linda Pall, Aaron Ament, Nancy Chaney, and the über-liberal Moscow City Council voted an anti-business regulation. Recall the Moscow Walmart shutting down? Businesses moving across the state line? These are excerpts from the Moscow-Pullman Daily News article. Notice how prescient the local business owners were in their predictions.
Some local business owners worry that Moscow might be shutting out new business after the City Council on Tuesday approved new regulations for big-box development.
People are going to cross the border to Washington to shop, said Moscow business owner Jim Demeerleer, owner of the Furniture Center in Moscow. This is not the time for Moscow to fold up doors. We should be opening them and telling businesses they are more than welcome to come here. Moscow would bloom and prosper.
Gerard Connelly, owner of Tri State, agreed.
I understand the councils concern about big-box stores, but Moscow doesnt exist in a vacuum, he said. Pullman is welcoming big-box business and thats a bigger threat to Moscow.
…
The law fell short of placing a cap on the size of a new store, a provision many community members had called for.
Here is the anti-business stance of the MCA and Moscow’s liberals:
If we wrote an ordinance that would keep big business out of Moscow, I would be in favor of that, [Aaron Ament] said.
City attorney Randy Fife said that could create problems.
Its problematic to characterize an ordinance as one that keeps people out of the market, Fife said.
And yet, that’s exactly what Linda Pall, Aaron Ament, and the über liberals voted to do.
Councilman John Webervoted against the ordinance because he was opposed to treating new business differently than existing businesses.
We are saying to new businesses You will never be part of our community. We are treating business differently just because they are new and large, but they are part of our community, he said.
And now we’re up to Linda Pall’s take on banning Walmart:
Councilwoman Linda Pall said she was pleased with the outcome.
Back in August, we knew that things were in the wind, and we’ve ended up with a very workable ordinance. Large-scale retailers can take a look at Moscow and see a community that is proud of itself, she said.
Actually, a large-scale retailer shut down its business and moved over the state line because of Linda Pall’s and the rest of that City Council’s vote.
Come on, Moscow, we cannot go back to the economic poverty that the MCA brought us in the 2000s.