There are a lot of topics to discuss when it comes to issues in Sweet Home. School test scores, dropout rates, lack of businesses, failing businesses, lack of entertainment, lack of community centers (which I don’t understand), but people are talking about it! They go online, and they rattle off a complaint about one thing or another. They are doing this all while looking at big daddy government to “fix” the issue. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen comments about why the city should be doing something about it.
It reminds me of the movie Bridesmaids, where Annie is on the plane and tries to steal a first-class seat, but the flight attendant tells her to go to coach. Her friend comes over with a first-class ticket and offers to trade her “because everyone should experience first class even if they can’t afford it,” Annie responds with this smart-ass valley girl’s “Help me, I’m poor” line. It absolutely gets me in the giggle box every time. Yes, it’s way out of context, and you had to have seen the movie to know what I am writing about, but this line lives on in our family. Every time someone is a little “light,” they drop the line, and everyone gets a chuckle and ponies up.
The reality of the situation is that anytime you make a particular problem a “city” problem, it then becomes an “everyone” problem. Cities run solely on tax revenue and grants, also known as someone else’s money. It’s a combined pool that taxpayers create by trading their limited time on this earth for pieces of paper that they then give to the city to accommodate commerce, infrastructure, and protection. “Kind of like the mob… but they are the good guys… so it’s okay,” he said with a half-kidding smile on his face.
Sorry, my anarcho-capitalist roots were rising up there. I’ll shove them back down in the dark pit where they belong. The point I am trying to make here is that while certain things go without saying, police, roads, water, sewer, etc… There are certain things that the city shouldn’t be a part of. Things that don’t share a common interest among all the citizens. Not everyone cares about having a place for your club to meet and socialize. Not everyone cares about pickleball courts, city amphitheaters, disc golf courses etc…
The idea that these are “city” problems seems absurd to me. Because it only affects a particular portion of the populace. Not the entirety of the populace. That’s not to say these things aren’t important, because they very much are. I like the idea of pickleball courts, amphitheaters, and, hopefully, one day, a partially covered year-round drag strip with heated seats and cold beer on tap. For the people watching, not the drivers, clearly. But those aren’t “city” things; those are people things.
People, particularly those with money, given the proper motivation, could be responsible for such things. But in Sweet Home, our “rich people” pool is more like a puddle, and they get tapped for stuff all the time. Most of them, if not all, give freely and regularly. If you have spent any time sitting on any board of a non-profit in town, you know this.
So our ratio of poor people to rich people is off. We have a giant lake of poor people in this town and a small puddle of rich people with a creek of middle class running in between. So you might ask yourself, how do we change that ratio? How do we get more rich people in Sweet Home?
Well, there are two ways of doing that; one is importing them. This takes building fancy city infrastructure and high-end housing developments with cool amenities at a less-than-Portland price. And unless you want to Portland your Sweet Home and be forced out of your home, I would advise against such things. The other way, the better way, the right way, in my opinion, is industry.
Sweet Home needs economic growth by way of industry. It needs jobs, but not just basic jobs. It needs industry-level jobs. The kind of industry that creates a secondary economy around it. Where not only does the industry hire people, but it also requires tradespeople to maintain it. Like logging back in the day. When Sweet Home was a much bigger logging town, people had stacks of cash. Not just at the top end either, but all across the board. The type of cash where you were okay with paying a little more for your milk and eggs because it was in town and convenient.
Integrating industry into Sweet Home injects cash into our economy. Cash doesn’t solve every problem, but it solves most of them. Teachers can stop focusing on how to limit their students’ exposure to poverty-stricken issues like food, hygiene, and health. They can focus on just teaching the kids basic stuff like math and English, and hopefully welding, shop, and forestry. How about doing your taxes? Nope, that’s another editorial for a later time.
Industry allows people to take greater risks, be flush with their monthly bills, put aside some extra every month, and open their own businesses. Thus expanding the economy and the availability of businesses in Sweet Home and creating secondary economies with their success. Failure also means you don’t have to go live with your parents for three years while you try to find a job that isn’t a two-hour commute away. You just go get a new job.
So this changes the ratio of poor and rich. It doesn’t solve poverty but makes one hell of a dent in it. It doesn’t make everyone rich, but it creates more opportunities for people to become financially independent. Got a homeless problem? Now, the pool of people to help is 10x what it was before. Want to have a club meeting at a nice place? Now you have options. Need food for starving kids? You have thousands of people who are able to donate without worrying if they will have enough to finish out the month.
Now, if you have made it this far without throwing the paper in the trash or tossing your phone across the bathroom (let’s not pretend like we don’t read The New Era on the toilet.) The question becomes, how do we bring industry to Sweet Home? The answer is, I don’t know, ask the city. This is where I insert the winky face emoji and a gif of someone laughing.
The answer is that it only takes a group of people with a million bad ideas to have one really good idea. The city has committees for all kinds of stuff, like murals, health, and safety. Why not an industry committee?
Now, full disclosure: I know this has been talked about to some level at the city. I am also not bagging on anyone there. In fact, I very much like the city, minus the fact that they share every other news station’s stories on their social media except ours. But I digress; we can look to the city for this, but we can also look to ourselves. We don’t necessarily need the city to form a group of people with bad ideas. We just need people who are interested in seeing Sweet Home go back to the days of old. Industry strong, with wealth and a positive cash flow economy.
So who of you out there has a million bad ideas but maybe one really great idea? Get together with some other people and let me know. Dare I write..? Let’s make Sweet Home Great Again!