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As an active worker-owner with Weaver Street Market Co-operative these past six years, I have worked hard not only to help WSM be successful as a business, but also as a model for democratic co-operation. It is with regret that I have to report that WSM continues to fail on both counts. It is time now to begin an active, community-wide conversation about the future financial and co-operative direction of WSM, and I invite OrangePolitics to take part in that conversation.
Bottom line: WSM has a crippling long-term debt of $8 million, incurred undemocratically in order to pay for the dubious expansion project of 2007/2008. That debt is costing our co-op millions in capital and interest repayments each year. Hence, the need for the 15% sales increase in 2011. With similar efforts required in the next four years.
It is WSM workers who are having to make those repayments by working ever harder, for less. We get longer opening hours. Less shift hours. Insufficient staff support. Paltry pay raises. And no dividend (haven't seen one for the past three years).
On Monday, Feb 28, the town of Chapel Hill will hold a public forum in response to Lex Alexander's petition to allow food trucks to operate on private property within town limits. Food trucks, such as Parlez-Vous Crepes and Only Burger, have a dedicated following in Durham and Carrboro, but are prohibited by zoning ordinances in Chapel Hill and Raleigh. These businesses are currently required to meet state health department regulations. At the local level, they pay for a variety of licenses, including a business license and an itinerant merchant permit. In Durham, they are required to be "tethered to a brick and mortor kitchen" and they also pay "rent" to the business whose private property they operate from (same as in Carrboro).
One of the positive economic development efforts by Orange County in conjuction with Alamance, Chatham, and Durham Counties is the Piedmont Food Processing Center. As it's website says its "A business incubator for food entrepreneurs and farmers in the Piedmont Region to add value to local farm products and create new local food businesses." Today they announced that a manager for the Center has been hired. See the press release below for more information.
The Chapel Hill Town Council, in June 2010, adopted a goal of creating one-page strategies for Public Art, Communications, Sustainability, and Affordable Housing like the one-pager created for Economic Development. The Affordable Housing Technical Advisory Group was recently formed to aid town staff in developing a one-pager for Affordable Housing. The Technical Advisory is made up of representatives from The Community Home Trust, Habitat for Humanity, IFC, EmPOWERment, Inc., CASA, Justice United, East West Partners, Radway Design Associates, Orange County Housing, Human Rights, and Community Development, the Chapel Hill Public Housing Program, and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce.
I thought this was a very direct point about the philosophical divide on economic development (ED) from the Carrboro Board of Aldermen's recent annual retreat.
The aldermen agreed that some organizations just don't get Carrboro's vision, especially the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, and Orange County's Economic Development Commission, and they wondered aloud whether they should seek support from those two groups for the Think Local First Campaign.
- The Herald-Sun - Carrboro wants people to Think Local First, 2/2/2010
Brian has written about this divide before, but I've never seen it laid out quite so starkly. Can't we all just get along?
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