As reported in the Az Star, Wal-Mart is preparing to fight the city of Tucson's Big Box Ordinance. Wal-Mart seems to bring problems to many communities, not only in Arizona, but throughout the USA.
Click here to read the story:
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/189671
8 comments:
Thank You for including this article
on the LOVE blog.
Wal Mart in my opinion is getting
so big and powerful which has resulted in their using their power and money to "buy" their way out of
following existing rules.
Wal Mart is using the consumer and the tax payers money to benefit Wal Mart and cut off shopping
choices,.
This is not Ok!!
"using their power and money to 'buy' their way out of following existing rules" works for other developers (not just WalMart) in Oro Valley for zoning changes and "interpretations", I believe.
Rather than throw around accusations, which, in my opinion, have no foundation, why don't the two posters prior to this one make specific allegations demonstrating where Wal-Mart or "other developers" bought any favorable rulings.
Those are serious (criminal) accusations and I don't think they should be just flippantly used.
Yes, Wal-Mart has used its deep pockets to try to get around local laws. Sam Walton warned the company not to "create a fuss" when towns don't want them, but the folks Wal-Mart today would rather fight than go elsewhere.
In the early 1990s, in Greenfield, Massachusetts, Wal-Mart set up one of its early “astroturf” (fake grassroots) groups, "Citizens for Economic Growth.” They set up their local lawyer as the head of the group, and every penny spent on their losing effort to decide a rezoning issue on the ballot came from Wal-Mart. They failed in other cases, as well. In Eureka, California, in August 1999, Wal-Mart's "consumer" group, "Eureka Citizens, Businesses and Wal-Mart stores for Responsible Economic Planning,” spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars on a rezoning ballot question, only to lose the vote by a 61-39% margin. But citizens in Payson and Yuma, Arizona were outspent by Wal-Mart campaigns there. So forming "astroturf" groups is a common tactic for Wal-Mart, and it raises an issue of fairness to many neighborhood groups. Wal-Mart is the largest, richest company in the world, and it can well afford to pour into the local political process. Neighbors complain that the superstores see the law as available to the highest bidder.
In 1998, the Tucson City Council passed a zoning ordinance that requires superstores larger than 100,000 square feet (larger than two football fields!) to meet certain standards for noise, traffic, lighting, and hours of operation. The average Wal-Mart store in 1998 was less than 100,000 square feet, by the way. The city law only governs stores that, because of their scale, are more likely to have significant adverse economic impacts on competition and public revenues. Such zoning ordinances are entirely legal. The Tucson ordinance also requires developers to go before a public hearing, and requires a city council vote on superstore proposals. It also limits non-taxable sales in stores exceeding 100,000 square feet to no more than 10% of the store's floor area. Non-taxable items include groceries and prescriptions.
Wal-Mart didn’t like the grocery restriction or the public hearing process. So in October, 1999, they formed a new astroturf group called "Consumers for Retail Choice Sponsored by Wal-Mart." The new "consumers" group was controlled by Wal-Mart: its President was Wal-Mart's district manager in Tucson, and the Treasurer was Wal-Mart's lawyer. They hired a public relations firm to help the campaign, and their first act was to hire paid "petition circulators" to gather signatures in the community to place a referendum before the voters of Tucson, challenging the new zoning ordinance. By early November, they had spent $27,500 on the paid petition circulators. Wal-Mart space and employees were also used in their stores to gather signatures. (If Wal-Mart uses its stores to allow the gathering of ballot campaign signatures, could they have prevented SOVOG or other community groups from circulating petitions in the store? What right do they have to allow only certain public policy issues to use their store for signatures, while rejecting others? By all rights, all citizens’ groups should have the right to set up a table in Wal-Mart and gather signatures. First Amendment rights should not be selectively screened by corporations.) The Union of Citizens to Save Our Neighborhoods (TUCSON), comprising real homeowners and residents, and not "sponsored" by any corporation, worked hard to oppose the referendum.
By December, the astroturf group had paid $33,529.50 to political consultants. All of their funding had come from Wal-Mart.
The Tucson City Clerk informed Wal-Mart that they were using the wrong form to gather names, and should be using city forms, not state petitions.
Wal-Mart's paid machine collected 14,770 signatures, and they thought they were good to go, because Tucson city rules required only 7,703 signatures to get on the ballot. But the city then challenged the Wal-Mart petitions, stating that the company had not followed city guidelines in preparing its petition. Wal-Mart went to court arguing that it did not have to follow city rules, but state rules, and that under state law the petition sheets were properly circulated and composed.
On January 31st, 2000, a Superior Court Judge ruled in favor of Wal-Mart, saying that state law prevails over city law, and that Wal-Mart's petitions were valid. But two days later, the same judge ruled that pursuant to state law Wal-Mart did not have enough signatures. Under Title 19 of Arizona law, Wal-Mart had to gather 10% of "the whole number of votes cast", not just ballots cast. In the election used as the basis for the calculation, voters could vote for up to 3 city councilors, so the whole number of votes cast was much higher than the ballots. According to the Superior Court ruling, Wal-Mart would need roughly 15,000 signatures, instead of the 7,703 signatures they would have needed under the city method of ballots-only threshold.
By then, it was too late to go back and run another petition drive. That means Tucson's new big box ordinance remained in effect.
Wal-Mart took the decision to the Arizona Court of Appeals, which ruled at the end of May 2000 in Tucson’s favor.
Wal-Mart dropped its plans for a 200,000 square-foot. superstore in the hotly contested El Con mall project. But the company made it clear it has "other interests in Tucson" and wants to kill the ordinance so it doesn't appear in any other Arizona town. For now, the Tucson ordinance stands, and in this case, Wal-Mart's efforts to buy “democracy" in Tucson failed.
Wal-Mart vowed to appeal the two lower court decisions to the Arizona Supreme Court. The "Consumers for Retail Choice" remained the plaintiff, even though it's really Wal-Mart that is the plaintiff.
In late September, 2003, a judge in Pima County, Arizona Superior Court tossed out a lawsuit filed by Wal-Mart against the zoning law in Tucson. Wal-Mart argued that the city's Mayor had violated open meeting laws by faxing memos to council members, but the judge ruled the Council never met or discussed the matter privately. The judge also disagreed with Wal-Mart that the Tucson law was unconstitutional. He said Wal-Mart had the right to get involved in the drafting of the law, and that cities have a right to enact zoning laws regulating the combination of grocery with retail sales, and such laws help protect the health, safety and welfare of local residents. Wal-Mart said the law was designed to protect smaller groceries from competition, but the judge said that the law allowed the City Council to grant variances, and that existing stores were grandfathered by the law. The City argued that Wal-Mart could have asked the city for an exemption for any store it wanted to build after the law was adopted. In essence, the court ruled that Wal-Mart had not yet been harmed in any way by the law, since it had not been denied approval for a store, and had not asked for an exemption.
This was an important legal precedent, because it affirmed the right of communities to pass ordinances that regulate the size of buildings for public purposes.
In November, 2006, Wal-Mart and public officials in Pima County reached a “development agreement” in which the giant retailer gets to build a supercenter southwest of Tucson, in return for giving back the county 2% of its sales for the next 25 years. On the surface, this appears to be little more than a kick-back scheme, in which Wal-Mart is giving up some of its profits, and buying its way into Pima. But it’s even worse than that, because without the $35 million, the roadwork necessary to get shoppers to Wal-Mart’s store would not have worked. Wal-Mart is underwriting the cost of infrastructure improvements that would not be necessary without the Wal-Mart store.
The developer, Donahue-Schriber, and Pima County, announced an agreement for a 123,000 square-foot supercenter, plus outlots, on a 30-acre site. Wal-Mart will submit to the county's design-review process; and will have to comply with the "dark skies" ordinance, which curbs light pollution to aid astronomers; use landscaping designed by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum; and limit hours of operation. The developer will also pay $600,000 in road impact fees. The money being kicked-back by Wal-Mart will be used to pave the way to its store, mostly road improvements, like widening an access road, improving the intersection, adding a stoplight and a bus stop at the shopping center, etc. But half of the money will go to purchase of more land to buffer the Tucson Mountain Park from development. Wal-Mart will put up some of the money for the $20 million in road improvements in advance and be reimbursed from the set-aside later. The Wal-Mart money will supplement 1997 transportation bond money and state road money. This site is considered environmentally sensitive because it lies along a route to Saguaro National Park West and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and the southern entrance to Tucson Mountain Park. The development will bring more traffic and pollution close to Tucson Mountain Park.
The county had the right to tell Wal-Mart that “a huge retail project” at this location is inappropriate. Because of this “development agreement,” the county has signed off on the project without any public hearings or debate. All that’s left are minor design details. The major issue of taking 30 acres in the desert near historic, tourist destinations, and paving it over, has already hardened. Wal-Mart is delighted with the deal.
If Wal-Mart had not put up the $35 million, this project would not have happened. A smaller, more appropriately scaled project is now off the table—without any public input.
The county is touted this deal as a “model” in contrast to the fight in Tucson, where city officials and Wal-Mart made little progress after two years of negotiations. The Bridges proposal in Tucson includes a 65-acre “biosciences park”, an upscale housing development and a big-box store.
In February, 2007, Eastbourne Investments Ltd., offered Tucson $2 million for “neighborhood betterment” in order to better his own bottom line. The developer submitted plans, called The Bridges, for a housing subdivision, a bioscience park, and a big box store on the south side of Tucson. The city would also kick in $4.5 million from the construction sales taxes generated from the project, for job training, business assistance and neighborhood programs. The developer tried to sweeten the big-box deal with upscale housing, and a “tech park” to be developed by the University of Arizona on the enormous, 350 acre site. The project requires the City Council to exempt Eastbourne from the city’s big box ordinance, and school arrangements for the children who move into the housing has also been a sticking point. The newspaper says the project includes 1 million square feet of retail, which is about the size of 21 football fields—not counting any of the parking lots, which could triple the impervious space. Wal-Mart, as if often the case, has not indicated its formal participation in the plan. The developer kicked in $2 million, which will include “economic-improvement grants” for local nonprofit groups. Councilors have been told the project will “bring 900 jobs,” but most of the jobs it brings are already there, working at other cash registers. Members of the city council were willing to sacrifice the city’s big box zoning ordinance.
Once a city passes a big box ordinance, if it begins to grant exemptions as developers come forward with large developments, then the original ordinance itself is meaningless. In Tucson’s case, the ordinance is limited only to superstores, exempting many large scale non-food stores. Even so, the city now, in effect, has no big box ordinance, because the precedent has been set by The Bridges project, and every subsequent developer will want the same treatment. All the political effort that went into Tucson’s big box ordinance will be destroyed by Eastbourne’s $2 million sweetener. Other developers will recognize that Tucson zoning permits are for sale-—if the price is right.
And sure enough, by May 2007, Wal-Mart started a petition drive that, if approved by voters in November, would repeal a key provision of Tucson 's big-box ordinance.
Wal-Mart filed papers to create the "Consumer Choice Initiative," which would repeal the portion of the city's big-box ordinance restricting food and beverage sales to no more than 10 percent of the store's total space.
Wal-Mart got into the game late — it needs to collect 11,615 valid signatures from registered city voters by July 5.
Wal-Mart also underwrote a similar challenge to a new zoning ordinance in Las Vegas, NV which resembled the Tucson ordinance.
If Wal-Mart is so popular with consumers, why do they spend so much time and money in court and in local elections trying to circumvent local laws? When you shop at Wal-Mart, you are helping to pay the expenses of groups like the "Citizens for Retail Choice."
Thank You Oro Valley Mom!
You certainly did your research
on this and other issues.
Good Work!!!!!!!!!!!
OV Objective Thinker....why do you not attend some of the meetings...
at the last one, the question was asked "How will this affect Ventana?"
Wow, we care :) This was asked by an OV Town person....not from the community.
Ventana did not wish to help with our fight to disallow the Crematorium.
So it is OK for SOVOG to take an issue to the voters, but not OK for a commercial entity to do the same.
Now your position is becoming much clearer!!!!
OVOT,
You implied that the "accusations" were "serious (criminal)" and "had no foundation." Ms. Coyote and Ferlin were just pointing out that it happens, and I provided the foundation.
Now, you've changed your complaint to "So it is OK for SOVOG to take an issue to the voters, but not OK for a commercial entity to do the same."
So the question is, should voters have more rights to determine what happens in their hometowns than out-of-town corporations? I think most voters would say yes.
The initiative process was designed so that voters in an area could put issues up for a vote. It's important for voters to know when out-of-town corporations form and fund fake grassroots organizations to challenge local authority.
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