Yep, that's my town

You may have heard on your news that there is a town in California that is going to use the power of Eminent Domain to keep WalMart from building a store in their community.

Yep. That's my town.

The truly interesting thing about this that the news isn't mentioning: a year ago the council was pretty strongly telling it's citizens that we were going to have to accept WalMart. We needed the sales tax revenue.

But a citizen action group stepped in and started organizing the city (again). The council heard the voices (close to 75% of the town does not want the WalMart here), and decided to listen to the citizens. It's going to cost us $13 million or so to accomplish this task, but I'm glad it's going forward.

What will happen to parcel in the future? It is designed to be grocery store, a drugstore and other retail outlets. When the city gets the land it will invite developers to come up with a plan for the land that does not include any "big box" type stores.

I'm praying for a Trader Joe's.

Tags: Hercules, WalMart