Shop local? (December 8, 2015)
The Town of Apple Valley has started an ad campaign urging persons to shop local. Apparently, they are trying to lead by example through its mega-million-dollar hostile takeover of Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company.
There are two problems with this advice (not counting the subject/verb disagreement that appears throughout the ad copy).
The first would be the hypocrisy that is — unfortunately — nothing new in utterances by Town representatives.
You might have noticed that the hundreds of millions of dollars the Town proposes to spend buying Ranchos don’t stay here in Apple Valley, they go to those furriners
who own Ranchos. These are the same supposedly awful foreigners
who are not worthy of a reasonable return on their investment of millions of dollars in our community, according to our breathtakingly ungrateful Town council members.
And the bond interest payments on the hundreds of millions of dollars the Town will have to borrow to finance this seizure? Every penny of those millions will go to some lender outside of Apple Valley as well.
In fact, if you go through the warrant registers from the Town, you’ll note that the Town outsources many of its purchases that could be made right here in Apple Valley. Yet the ad links to a page on the Town’s website that actually says, We encourage you to … hire an Apple Valley professional for your next project.
The second is that the Apple Valley Fire Protection District receives no money from sales taxes.
Clearly, we’re supposed to do what they say, and not what they do.
— Greg Raven is Co-Chair of Apple Valley Citizens for Government Accountability, and is concerned about quality of life issues.