The author, John Marek, is executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
After 15 years serving as a local developer for multiple rural communities, I have heard many humorously inaccurate depictions of the relationship between local government and the business sector that left me asking myself, “Where do people get these ideas?”
I may have found the answer.
To get in the holiday spirit, the wife and I typically watch a couple of cheesy Christmas movies on Netflix. This year we found a gem called “Christmas Comes to Willow Creek,” a made-for-TV production from 1987 that stars a slightly past their prime John Schneider and Tom Wopat of “Dukes of Hazard” fame. They play feuding brothers forced together to deliver an important, but secret, truckload of supplies from California to the eponymous Alaska town.
Willow Creek, you see, was hard hit by the closing of “the cannery,” although what they canned there or why it closed are never specified. Throughout the movie the cannery is portrayed as a sort of public entity whose primary purpose is to provide jobs for the people of the town. It is even sort of implied that the town somehow owns the cannery and the mayor is in charge of it.
At the end of the movie it is revealed that the truck contains all the ingredients needed to make thousands of cans of chili, and that one of the brothers has a special chili recipe. Upon hearing this news, the mayor proclaims the cannery open again and the town rejoices.
It was at that point that I leaped up and shouted, “That’s not how business works. That’s not how any of this works.”
While local government certainly has a role to play in the economy, it is not nearly as direct a role as many people think. County and municipal leaders impact the big picture; things like investment in infrastructure and regulations which can make a community an easy place to do business … or not. But the mayor (or town council or any other governmental body) can’t simply declare a business open, or force a business to stay open or prevent a business from leaving town.
On a more practical level, having a truck full of ingredients and a killer recipe is a long way from being in the business of making chili. You’d have to scale the recipe for mass production, design a label, set up a distribution network and put quality assurance measures in place. It would take months if not years to make those things happen, and even then you’d be competing against established companies like Wolf and Campbell’s.
I get it. These Christmas movies are more about fantasy than reality, but still …