We had our "Made in Linn County" organizational meeting Wednesday night.
We anticipated that those who may have been working on their own projects for organizing small businesses would feel threatened, that was not our mission or intention. A point to consider is the community at large has never heard of these groups. They presented their philosophy as that of a web and they were networking together, which is a good thing for them. Our intention was transparency, we were a group of the community and for the community, and we embrace their hard work…I am not saying their effort was not for the community by all means, it just was not being presented that way at this point. Some of theses people are just trying to survive in this business climate. There were lessons and positives from the meeting. One important positive was those who felt threaten in the beginning, felt much less threaten by the end of the meeting...we need allies not enemies.
The good new is the "Made in Linn County" organization has caught the attention of many. Hopefully we continue down that path. One of the missons of Made in Linn County is one of keeping dollars recycling in the local community. Our mission is not to promote any one person or business financially. It is about the health of a community. For an example, let us say you have a community of 20,000 families that spend $150.00 during a holiday season, that is not unreasonable, right? You take 20,000 families at $150.00 and that becomes 3 million dollars of stimulus money for that community. The bonus, according to the American Business Alliance and others, is when you spend the dollar locally on products made locally using local labor; you can multiply the effect of that dollar spent by a factor of three. Therefore, what this means it would take 9 million dollars of stimulus money injected in the community to get the same affect to the bottom line of the people in that community if the products were imported and sold by large non-local chain stores.
There is another bonus of having a business alliance and that is the size of your footprint. United businesses could get involved with the local government and could have the same consideration of bending policy. Maybe the same consideration of a K-Mart or some similar entity. Small businesses are closer to the pulse of the community and their input is worth consideration, but if these small businesses are strung out on a string, they have smaller footprints than an alliance and most of the small businesses do not have time to attend local economic developmental meeting. They are just trying to survive and their time is everything. When you have an Alliance, you can have a task group can decided upon to represent the whole.
There is also the environmental impact of buying local. You do not have transportation costs in both machines and fuel. I read recently that it takes about 80 calories of energy for every one calorie in a Tomato grown in Peru to make it into your salad at the dinner table. We are not being good stewards of this planet of ours,,,but I totally understand that most small businesses are just worried about making it from one season to the next. I just thought it would be worth mentioning.
The Albany as industrialized as it is have many people that want to make a difference to the local economy, jobs, and the environment. I believe that we in Linn and our sibling Benton County can be the mustard seed for change in Oregon.
Time to go to work and then a panic planning for the canvassing tomorrow, I have had divided attention this time around. For those who pray, I can use a prayer, but not for me…for the cause that change begins in each of us and then spreads. I am sure there are people out there much more talented then myself and we need their help.
Peace :-)
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