Posted on 04/03/2006 4:49:49 PM PDT by SJackson
There comes a time to draw a line in the sand over economic development, and we have reached that time right now in the Northwoods.
I am specifically talking about a sensible and reasonable small-business project being proposed by Jack Dunbar, who wants to develop a gravel pit on a properly zoned Lake Tomahawk parcel his family has owned and logged for decades.
Anti-growth forces, most of them relatively new to the area, are attempting to thwart that development, but the larger issues in this case can be applied across the board to almost any economic development situation.
Simply put, there are those – mostly long-time residents – who want decent jobs and good business opportunities in the area so they can stay here and provide a prosperous living for their families and so their children won’t be forced to move away when they graduate from high school.
Then there are those – I’ll call them “Johnny Come Latelys” – who have been here only a brief time but think they can stamp their imprint of what Northwoods life ought to be on everyone else.
These folks want to tell us – without any democratic input and without any compassion for the people who have lived and worked here all their lives – what kind of businesses and industry we need and don’t need. They want to tell the hard-working business community how their buildings should look and how big their signs should be.
They want to tell business owners what times they should open and what times they should close.
You name it – when it comes to businesses, these people want to tell you what to do. Never mind that most of them have never owned a Northwoods business or know what it’s like to run a company of any kind. They still want to tell the residents what to do because, somehow, they think they know better than we do.
These Johnny Come Latelys are the thought police, to put it bluntly.
Now, I know what some of our critics will say when they read this: “Oh, there goes The Times again, calling people names.”
Perhaps, but years ago my family got tagged with the name “Johnny Come Lately,” and I think it’s only fair now to pass it along to others.
Back in the early 1960s, this newspaper’s publisher, Don Walker, wrote a column urging the community to embrace the gaming industry as a way to spur our tourist economy and promote economic growth.
At the time, he was relatively new to the area himself, having bought the paper only in 1958.
Needless to say, the column didn’t sit well with some residents and, in the next issue, one of them wrote a letter calling Mr. Walker a “Johnny Come Lately” who wanted to tell the locals what they needed and what they didn’t.
After that, a lot of people took to calling him “Johnny.”
Now we have a whole flock of new Johnnys, and some of them are attempting to stop Jack Dunbar from opening his gravel pit. He deserves to be able to do so, not only because he needs it to support his small business – which he does – but also because there is no legal or logical reason to stop him.
On the other hand, there are many reasons to support him.
For one thing, his family has been in business for more than 30 years and has owned that 40-acre parcel for at least 70 years. What’s more, Mr. Dunbar operates only two dump trucks and is basically a single-man operation. So he needs the gravel pit to survive, to feed his family, and to pay his taxes.
Giving him the opportunity to do that is not too much to ask, especially given all that his family has done for this community. The late Bob Dunbar served on the Lake Tomahawk town board for 10 years, and Jack is active as a volunteer coach of baseball and basketball.
Mr. Dunbar spends a lot of time supporting our young people, only to be opposed by the Johnny Come Latelys, who never seem to volunteer their time or support small business or help the poor among us.
They seem to only show up when they have a chance to ruin someone’s business or to crush someone’s property rights.
As usual, their legal arguments are superfluous and downright dishonest. Among other things, they have accused Mr. Dunbar of being in a single-family residential zone, which is untrue. It is zoned Forestry 1-A, a district in which gravel pits are permitted uses.
So what’s the problem? It would be one thing if he were trying to change his property from single-family zoning to Forestry 1A, but that’s not the case.
Here’s what is the case: All the people who moved around his property during the last 10 to 15 years knew what his zoning was and that large logging trucks were already going in and out of the property.
Guess what? If they did not notice those trucks all these years, they surely won’t be affected by a gravel pit because they will obviously be too far away to see or hear it.
One of the toughest aspects of these kinds of battles is the relative affluence of those who oppose this and similar projects. They have their security and money but don’t want others to earn a living.
That’s the case with Oneida County Supervisor Guy Hansen, who wants to prevent the project, while another opponent of Mr. Dunbar earns $66,000 as a government bureaucrat.
He has his salary and health insurance, but I’ll bet he doesn’t know what it’s like to struggle in the small-business world, to have to hire help, to pay business taxes and unemployment and FICA and Medicare, or to provide health insurance.
I know he doesn’t have to worry about being paid for a job once it’s done. And he doesn’t have to worry, because of the cloak of big government and big unions, that the taxes he pays will go to someone just like himself who is trying to put Mr. Dunbar out of business.
The Oneida County zoning committee should do the right thing on April 5 and approve Mr. Dunbar’s gravel pit. That would be the local thing to do. It would be the legally responsible thing to do.
And it would be the ethical thing to do, no matter what out-of-town and out-of-tune chorus the Johnny Come Latelys, whom we hardly know, are singing.
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We need the name of this "government bureaucrat".
It takes 5 to 10 years for elitists to lose their big city idiocy.
In the meantime, just tell the eco-fascist hippies to goosestep back to whatever socialist hellhole they came from.
This will get them on the road to recovery.
If that doesn't work, proceed to Plan #2.
Assuming the article is accurate, this seems to be a case of stopping a perfectly legal use.
They often do stop a perfectly legal use by refusing permits, if others object and the zoning board bows down to them for votes.
Once you're outnumbered you are out of luck in most cases.
Right to farm law is state wide, and the locals can't change it.
It just gives you tools to fight back.
The same is happening in most states. It's time to invent and use unconventional but legal tactics to defeat anti-property-rights busybodies.
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