Belmar Business Partnership Specail (sic) Improvement District BBP/SID CY 2011 January 1 to December 31
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$40,000 to to evaluate business mix inventory and to determine what’s needed? And what, exactly are they going to do with that information? Are they going to tell Don’s Pizza King that we have too many pizza joints so he has to become a health food store? And since we’re a “Transit Village” and don’t like cars, should Yeager Automotive become an art gallery? Maybe Hanley’s liquor store should become a solar panel showroom. Cars, pizza, booze: bad. Art, health food, solar: good!
When will they learn that government economic planning does not work? In the Soviet Union they had the best minds in the country trying to decide what the best “business mix” should be. The results were empty shelves and lines for toilet paper.
The market is smarter than the planners and it should determine the proper business mix for Belmar. But even if we got our $40,000 worth and hired the most super fantastic people who really were smarter than the market, by what moral authority do they tell people what must be done with their own property? Supporters of the SID have compared it to a shopping mall, but the mall owner owns the property and has the moral and legal authority to determine the business mix of his mall. And the tenants have the choice not to lease there if they don’t like the terms. Our property owners in Belmar are already here and they are are the owners of their property so the comparison to a mall is not valid. Nobody should be coming along and taking their money and telling them what to do.
Another $40,000 will be spent in the first year on administrative costs. This is half of what they projected last year for the entire budget! I can’t imagine very many property owners are pleased about that.
I predict that the SID will not be an attraction for new businesses to Belmar but rather a deterrent. Businesses go where there is less regulation and fewer taxes, not more. I say let’s do the opposite of the SID. Lower taxes. Lessen regulation. End all this talk of “public-private partnership” and let the market work its magic. And learn how to spell “special” (it’s not a typo, they spelled it wrong twice).
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