This weekend is Wickenburg’s annual “Gold Rush Days” celebration. It’s the town’s one annual big event and it draws thousands of people to town, with an art fair, carnival, and parade, as well as other scheduled events.

It’s kind of a shame that the town has to manufacture an event to get people to come here. There’s lots to do and see in Wickenburg, yet the weekend the town gets the most visitors is the same weekend that hundreds of outsiders set up booths and carnival rides in an area away from the local shops and restaurants. As a result, all those visitors spend most of their money at the art fair, carnival, and food booths. A few local shops and restaurants that happen to be within walking distance of the Community Center get a share of the crowd, but the ones that aren’t nearby don’t see much extra traffic at all. It seems that the big winners at Gold Rush Days — other than the outside vendors — are the hotels, a handful of restaurants, the Town (through sales tax and business license fees), and whoever collects the fees for all those booths.

If you’re coming to Wickenburg for Gold Rush Days, I urge you to see more of the town than what’s in the Community Center parking lot. Take a walk on East Wickenburg Way, North Tegner Street, North Frontier Street, and the other connecting streets in downtown Wickenburg. Or hop in the car and take a drive down West Wickenburg Way. Throughout Wickenburg, you’ll find shops and restaurants that are open for business all year long — not just one weekend out of the year. These are the folks who work hard to make their businesses survive, the people who depend on visitors like you to succeed. They’re friendly and eager to please and they’ll make you glad you stopped in.

If you’re spending more than a day or two, do some homework at your hotel. Learn about the kinds of activities Wickenburg has to offer: museums, a nature preserve, hiking, golf, Jeep tours, helicopter tours. Or just keep browsing this site. There are lots of ideas for activities right here.

And remember, Wickenburg is open for business all year — not just the second weekend in February.

The Chamber of Commerce is publicly supporting Town council Candidates Kristi Henson, Scott Stewart, and Phil Richardson, along with the mayor who’s up for recall, Ron Badowski. Right?

Why are those names so familiar? Could it be because three out of four of them are on the Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors?

So the Chamber of Commerce is supporting political candidates who just happen to fill three of the five Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors positions? The Chamber of Commerce is, in effect, supporting itself to fill three political positions?

Hello? Does anyone else out there see something wrong with this?

Can you say conflict of interest?

Why doesn’t the Chamber of Commerce just take over the Town Council and be done with it? That would be just a little less obvious than what they’re doing, wouldn’t it?

And why is the Chamber of Commerce supporting any candidate at all? Shouldn’t they be supporting their members? The people struggling to keep their businesses alive? The same people who support the Chamber of Commerce by paying membership dues? What support are they getting from the Chamber?

What’s going on in Wickenburg these days anyway?

Worried about infrastructure to support all these new homes? Why should you? The elected officials certainly don’t seem to be worried at all.

Isn’t it all about revenue? Revenue for the town through property taxes. Revenue for the developers — many of which don’t even use local contractors — and Realtors through home sales. Revenue to certain elected officials through real estate-related gains to themselves, their businesses, and/or their families. What’s the saying? Money talks? Money is certainly talking at the front of the room in Town Council meetings.

I see a trend here. Get involved in real estate and then get elected to the Town Council. Or let a family member become mayor. You can profit — at the expense of the Wickenburg lifestyle, which is disappearing before our very eyes.

Have you ever seen a town this size with so many Realtors? There has to be at least a hundred of them. Have you ever wondered about that? Could it be that Wickenburg’s biggest business is turnover and that the products sold and resold and resold are homes and businesses? Obviously the only way to make that business thrive is to get more homes in town. More product to sell and resell and resell.

Election Day in Wickenburg for three Town Council seats is coming up on November 7. Let’s take a look at the candidates.

• Phil Richardson is a Realtor who operates Realty Executives. He’s already on the Town Council and, except on the very few occasions when he says there is a conflict of interest, he votes in favor of any zoning that will increase the number of homes or businesses available for sale. He’s the guy who bulldozed The Big Corral in downtown Wickenburg, turning a quaint western trail ride/stable business into a dustbowl, with dreams of putting a strip mall in its place. More than three years later, it’s still an eyesore, now sporting his re-election signs. And where exactly is his campaign funding coming from? Local landowners he recently voted in favor of changing zoning for and a company in Utah? Who else do we know with ties to Utah?
• Kristi Hensen is a mortgage loan officer. Is there any doubt in your mind how she will vote in a zoning issue? And has anyone seen where her funding is coming from?
• Scott Stewart owns a hardware store in town. His campaign is likely based on his status as a long-time business owner. For some reason, however, he doesn’t think Council members should sign a Code of Ethics. Does he have ties to real estate, too? Perhaps a good friend of his sells real estate? And have you read his personal introduction on the Wickenburg Sun‘s Web site? Mr. Stewart obviously didn’t get A’s in English. The guy comes off sounding like an idiot. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve seen three consecutive words spelled wrong in one publicly-released document. Good thing he’s not running for School Board.

These are the candidates the Wickenburg Sun is supporting. (The Sun‘s editorial suggests the Publisher prefers Jim Ferman, but if you read between the lines, you’ll see he’s suggesting Ferman as an “experiment” and really favors Stewart. Not that I’m suggesting that anyone read the Sun.) But we all know that the Sun is nothing more than a rubber stamp for everything that makes Wickenburg’s population grow. After all, they need to sell more newspapers. More people, more papers. Doesn’t matter if there isn’t enough content in each issue to keep a person busy more than ten minutes. And do they really care about the Wickenburg lifestyle?

Now let’s look at three other candidates, those endorsed by the Impact of the Wal-Mart Phenomenon on Rural Communities” (PDF) by Kenneth E. Stone of Iowa State University, begins:

There is strong evidence that rural communities in the United States have been more adversely impacted by the discount mass merchandisers (sometimes referred to as the Wal-Mart phenomenon) than by any other factors in recent times. Studies in Iowa have shown that some small towns lose up to 47 percent of their retail trade after 10 years of Wal-Mart stores nearby.

Maybe you don’t think of Wickenburg as a “rural community.” It was one when I first started coming here six years ago — which is one of the things that attracted me to the town. But that’s not the only document that addresses this issue.

In “The Impact of Wal-Mart on Small Towns” (PDF), a summary of a PBS documentary titled “Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town” by Micha Peled, Matt Kures and Bill Ryan present both sides of the argument about bringing a Wal-Mart to a small town. Their summary includes coverage of the economic, employment, and community character impacts:

…the actual economic value of a new Wal-Mart is often questioned. While Wal-Mart may provide tax revenues, many argue that the costs of municipal services such as water, sewer, police and fire protection outweigh the taxes received. Researchers suggest that as smaller stores are forced out of business, their tax revenues are lost and existing infrastructure is abandoned. Ultimately, these tax dollars are simply transferred from dollars spent at smaller retailers to dollars spent at Wal-Mart. Other businesses such as banks and local newspapers also suffer as many of the services they have provided are no longer needed. Sales from local retailers that were once recycled in the community are now sent to Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters.

Later, they say:

Given Wal-Mart’s site-selection strategy, they are often able to force smaller retailers out of business. Subsequently, as downtown retailers fail, the downtown is destroyed. The decline of the downtown leads to sprawling development, increased traffic at the edge of town, and abandoned infrastructure downtown. Accordingly, the change in land use and loss of green space brings environmental problems. Ultimately, many people view the loss of a community’s downtown business district as the loss of a community’s character.

Richard Freeman is a bit more blunt in the opening paragraph of his article, “Wal-Mart Collapses Cities and Towns“:

During the last 20 years, Wal-Mart has moved into communities and destroyed them, wiping out stores, slashing the tax base, and turning downtown areas into ghost-towns. This is accomplished through Wal-Mart’s policy of paying workers below subsistence wages, and importing goods that have been produced under slave-labor conditions overseas. Often, communities will even give Wal-Mart tax incentives, for the right to be destroyed.

Whoa! Calm down, fella.

How about this from an article titled “Wal-Mart’s Impact on Local Police Costs” (PDF), published by HometownAdvantage.org:

Many cities and towns across the country are reporting that big-box retailers are generating large numbers of police calls — far more than local businesses do.

One reason for this is that Wal-Mart and other big chains, as a matter of company-wide policy, involve the police in every incident, no matter how small. While someone caught shoplifting a $3 item from a local store might simply be told by the owner never to come back, that same $3 shoplifting incident at Wal-Mart will cost the city hours of police time in responding to the call, filling out paperwork, and a possible court appearance.

The article goes on to list specific examples of how police costs and crime have increased in communities after a Wal-Mart or other “big box” store came to town.

The Wickenburg Sun should be saying “No” to Wal-Mart, too. As Al Cross, Director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues reports in his article titled “Small-town newspaper folks have frank discussions with Wal-Mart executives“:

Wal-Mart has been huge for small-town newspaper folks for years — and not, most of them say, in a good way. The company buys relatively little newspaper advertising, and local newspapers and other businesses say it puts out of business the local firms that formed the retail and advertising bases in their areas.

Wal-Mart may also increase poverty levels in some areas. According to a study titled “Wal-Mart and County-wide Poverty” (PDF) published in October 2004 by Stephan J. Goetz and Hema Swaminathan of the Pennsylvania State University:

We find, after controlling for other factors determining changes in the poverty rate over time, that both counties with more initial (1987) Wal-Mart stores and with more additions of stores between 1987 and 1998 experienced greater increases (or smaller decreases) in family poverty rates during the 1990s economic boom period.

How does Wal-Mart do this? To paraphrase Goetz and Swaminathan, by displacing workers from higher-paid jobs in the retailers it drives out of business, by providing lower levels local philanthropy than the replaced businesses, and by reducing the number of independent local businesses, thus shrinking the pool of local leadership.

You want more? I have it.

If you already agree with me that Wickenburg is in dire need of good-paying jobs to attract younger, year-round residents, consider the findings of a University of California at Berkeley study, “Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs: Use of Safety Net Programs by Wal-Mart Workers in California” (PDF) by Arindrajit Dube and Ken Jacobs:

We estimate that Wal-Mart workers in California earn on average 31 percent less than workers employed in large retail as a whole…In addition, 23 percent fewer Wal-Mart workers are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance than large retail workers as a whole….At these low-wages, many Wal-Mart workers rely on public safety net programs—such as food stamps, Medi-Cal, and subsidized housing—to make ends meet.

In a Mother Jones article titled “Up Against Wal-Mart,” author Karen Olsson reports:

Given its staggering size and rapid expansion, Wal-Mart increasingly sets the standard for wages and benefits throughout the U.S. economy. “Americans can’t live on a Wal-Mart paycheck,” says Greg Denier, communications director for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). “Yet it’s the dominant employer, and what they pay will be the future of working America.” The average hourly worker at Wal-Mart earns barely $18,000 a year at a company that pocketed $6.6 billion in profits last year. Forty percent of employees opt not to receive coverage under the company’s medical plan, which costs up to $2,844 a year, plus a deductible.

Is that the kind of employer we need in Wickenburg?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Do a Google Search for “Wal-Mart impact on small towns” to get a long list of documents that discuss this important issue.

Personally, I think the people who want a big box store like Wal-Mart in town are selfish and cheap. I think they should be ashamed of themselves for preferring to support a gigantic retail monster like Wal-Mart rather than the small local businesses who are struggling to survive in Wickenburg’s seasonal economy. If more local people would shop in Wickenburg, we’d have more businesses in Wickenburg to meet their needs. We wouldn’t need a Wal-Mart. And we could help keep Wickenburg from losing its small-town charm.

(Of course, that’s a whole other battle to be fought.)

Are you against a Wal-Mart or other big box store coming to Wickenburg as much as I am? You can stop it. Here’s how:

• Vote. Do your homework on the candidates running for Mayor and council. See how they stand on this issue. And then follow through on election day by voting for the candidate who feels the way you do.
• Make a public stand. Keep track of the agendas for upcoming Town Council and Planning and Zoning meetings. You can find both of them on the Town of Wickenburg’s Web site. You can even go to this page to have meeting notices e-mailed to you! Then attend the meetings and make your voice heard!
• Get advice from the pros. Visit these Web sites: WalMartWatch.com, Sprawl-busters.com, AgainstTheWal.com, WakeUpWalMart.com, and Arizonans Against Wal-Mart (stopazwalmarts.com).

Think you can’t stand up against a giant like Wal-Mart? Think again. Read the “Challenging Wal-Mart” article on the PBS Online NewsHour Web site to learn about the other communities that fought back — and won.

What’s going on here? We all know that the mayor and council have been scratching for revenue sources for quite some time. The retail sales tax went up about 3 years ago. Annexation has run amok, with the town grabbing any Maricopa County property it can, whether the homeowner on that property agrees to annexation or not. Promises to property owners that their taxes will not increase will soon be as forgotten as the vote on Prop 421. I’m sure the town is counting on rising real estate values as an excuse to suck more revenue out of new town residents.

But raising the restaurant and lodging sales taxes? Is that the way to attract visitors to Wickenburg? Is that the way to attract new business to Wickenburg?

Wickenburg is already suffering from a seasonal economy brought on by its tourism-based approach to business. It already has far more housing than can be supported by good local, year-round jobs. Its residents routinely complain about high prices for necessities like gas and clothing. They think nothing of hopping in the car and driving down to Surprise or Glendale or Peoria to shop.

But rather than attract new local businesses (and employers) or stimulate the growth of existing businesses, Wickenburg prefers to ignore the root of the problem and suck tax revenue out of homeowners and visitors.

When are the Mayor and Council and (Chamber of Commerce, for that matter) going to wake up and smell the dry rot? The town can earn just as much tax revenue by making it more attractive to shop and dine and own a business in Wickenburg than it can by raising taxes that drive consumers away.