Ed Williams
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
What is the big secret? Your July 28 edition reports that Jefferson City was eliminated from the competition for the location of a factory to employ 1,500 people. That employer was not named, and the reason given was potential site flooding. There was no reason given for keeping the name secret.
Given that the economic development group, Jefferson City Chamber of Commerce, has other instances of misleading information, we have to question whether we are getting the whole story.
For your information, we can cite the chamber's attempt to force county zoning on residents. Almost everything about the campaign was untrue, but they tried to center it on chances of strip joints being erected. County zoning vote was defeated several years ago, but no strip joints have been built. Their campaign for use taxes and attempts to pass the unethical Proposition P have been equally dishonest. We have to question the vice president of economic development at the chamber whether we are getting the entire truth. Why would it be necessary to not report the potential employer? Was there even a potential employer? Could it be that the chamber was again using a cheap chamber trick to try to receive city and county funding even though they have no success in attracting jobs?
Could the fact that the Cole County unemployment rate was very low, about 3-4 percent, discourage employers? Would you build a factory in an area where it is unlikely to be able to find enough employees? Would you be willing to build a factory where the public schools receive the lowest grade in Central Missouri from the state department of education?
The chamber might not want a large employer. Local employers would have to compete for employees. That would increase the cost to companies like Midwest Block and Brick, Delong's Inc. and all the others.
The chamber still wants tax money to work for abatement of real estate taxes. The chamber wants us to think that they are responsible for every expansion of a business in JC. The fact is that most of the local expansion would not have gone out of JC. For example, would the Capital Mall have moved somewhere else?
We should not be allowing the chamber's cheap tricks to acquire our hard-earned tax money.