HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0032.029 2006-2008
Murashige Laura
From: Eric Mecklenburg [emecklenburg@gmail.comj
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 10:33 AM
To: counciltestimony@co.hawaii.hi.us
Cc: Jeanne Ryan; Loren; Randal; Linda Cholas; Linda Cholas; Sherri Fujita; Mary Gaddis;
Rebecca Kenney; Suzanne Kita; kits@hawaii.edu; 'Osh' Larish; Randal McEndree; Eric
Mecklenburg; Mela; mgaddis@hawaii.edu; Ellen Okuma; Patrick Reilly; Karen Riley; Kate
Sims; scline@hawaii.edu; stevencc@hawaii.edu; leebowden@hawaii.rr.com;
smarten@earthlink.net; chaseandhanes@yahoo.com; akama; Mandy Silva
Subject: Please Limit Big Island big-box Stores
Dear Council Members,
Please limit Big Island Big-Box Stores.
I saw what these stores do to a community in the town where 2 last taught Storm Lake,
Iowa. The town of Storm Lake has a University, a Tyson Chicken plant, a K-Mart where
people get their groceries, and the boarded up remnants of a dying commercial center where
people used to shop at small businesses. Micheal Pollen in The Omnivore's Dilemma spends
a good long chapter discussing how Iowa is a food desert, how, in spite of their being
surrounded by wonderful farmland, the farms do not grow what the people need to eat any
more because it was not commercially viable, and as a result, there is no diversity. The
availability of food there was worse than on the island I lived on in Micronesia, where
sometimes you couldn't find an onion for a couple of months. These big-box stores limit
opportunity for local farmers.
They limit opportunity for local involvement in the commerce surrounding a broad spectrum
of those things from which a town's character comes from. Homogeneity, in all its forms,
is a bad idea, and that is what these stores do, they homogenize. Local culture and
character are strong here, it is true, and that is why we choose to live here. Vote to
protect it. Vote to limit Big Island big-box Stores.
Eric Mecklenburg
Hilo
(608) 974-7434
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