Dave Leckness wants government to get into a couple new areas. First he wants City Hall to venture into the coupon business, even though it would compete with the private sector which already provides consumers with tons of coupons via newspapers, direct mail, internet and other media. Leckness is proposing the City create and maintain a website to promote coupons for local merchants.
Second, he wants the City to get involved in creating a business organization to replace the defunct Mission Viejo Chamber of Commerce. Small businesses have increasingly deserted the Chamber in favor of ‘leads groups’ or other activities that do a better job of informing and promoting their particular enterprise.
The South Orange County Regional Chamber of Commerce has been largely taken over by big corporations like Southern California Edison, Cox Communications, Santa Margarita Water District, UC Irvine, Mission Hospital, Hoag Hospital, Saddleback Memorial Hospital, San Diego Gas & Electric, The Gas Company, Shulman Hodges Law Firm, and others. The organization promotes their corporate special interests in local and regional matters. The Chamber is no longer the iconic mom-and-pop, apple-pie, resident-friendly organization.
Leckness, who is also involved promoting his local printing shop, placed both items on the Council agenda for next Tuesday.
If there are countless sources of coupons, and if resourceful small businesses choose other associations or activities above Chamber-like groups, why should local government spend the time, taxpayer money and other resources to become involved in the private sector?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
This looks like an election time proposal from Leckness–soon to be forgotten after the election.
The South Orange County Chamber has less than 166 members in a community that has over 2765 valid businesses. This organization has been ineffective for years!!
The South Orange County Chamber (located in the Santa Margarita Water District Office In Rancho Santa Margarita) has been a luncheon organization/social hour crowd–not one of promoting business in Mission Viejo.
We don’t need a bigger city government – it needs to be as small as possible. Let the private sector take care of this.
Why shouldn’t the City be involved in promoting all the businesses in the community? The problem with just a “local” chamber is that south county is just lumped with all the cities south of the “Y”.
[Editor's Note: How about sharing sales tax revenue with businesses? How about subsidizing costs? How about financial bailouts? How about partial city ownership in businesses? Where is the line drawn? How do you benefit businesses equally? Isn't the best help to retail business simply maintaining a high quality residential community?]
It’s not like one of his proposals would take advertising dollars away from the Dispatch…oh wait, it actually would.
And if what the Dispatch reports about the South County Chamber is true, then maybe there is a need for a local chamber. I’d join a local one before a county one in a hot second. I’ve started a brand new business and I’d love to make local contacts.
Since we went on this only cut taxes jag about 30 years ago, cities everywhere have become increasing dependent on sales tax dollars. Anything our council can do to increase the local merchants’ sales so the tax dollars increase should be looked into. Just because something is put on the ballot doesn’t mean the worst. It usually means someone took the idea to a council person and asked them to look into it.
They all put stuff on the agenda and if it’s a bad idea it dies without a second.
[Editor's Note: First, the Dispatch voluntarily promotes local retail entrepreneurs by providing free publicity for new storefront businesses. Other private citizens have provided a volunteer website to attract new businesses. Second, if Dave Leckness couldn't keep the MV Chamber going as a Chamber member, how will he do it as a councilmember? If Mr. Avery's Rotary Club or Lion's Club faltered, he wouldn't expect taxpayers to prop them back up, right? The Leckness approach is reminiscent of the Saddleback Valley News cartoon about the failed city-subsidized baseball team, the MV Vigilantes, showing a cardboard standup illusion of fans in the bleachers to support inflated attendance figures and to justify the use of tax dollars to support private enterprise. Why don't Mr. Leckness and Mr. Avery get together and organize a business group instead of looking to taxpayers?]
Re Dan Avery: Mr. Avery is the website manager for the Dave Leckness election campaign, and Mr. Avery’s wife is Dave’s campaign treasurer.
Ahh the machinations of Dan Avery. What could be more entertaining? Lets follow Mr. Avery’s logic to its natural conclusion just for fun.
Dan states, “Anything our council can do to increase the local merchants’ sales so the tax dollars increase should be looked into”. Then he also states, “Since we went on this only cut taxes jag about 30 years ago, cities everywhere have become increasing dependent on sales tax dollars.”
These statements betray Mr. Avery’s ideology. He believes government has the power to stimulate economies and not the individual. Never mind the trillions spent trying to stimulate the national economy. That model didn’t work, why would it work locally? Never mind the data from a hundred years of economic studies, and tax policy results. Never mind the FACT that Keynesian economic policy has failed time and time again.
No Mr. Avery and his ilk require the willing suspension of disbelief for anyone to fall for that drivel. When City Hall can do the basics right (like pave the streets) we might trust them with more, but don’t count on it.
I agree that the City should not get involved with manufacturing a new Chamber group. That should be left to the local businesses, and with all the complaining I see on here about the South County Chamber, I wonder why it hasn’t happened already.
However, I don’t see anything wrong with adding a link to the City website highlighting local business coupons. I would hazard a guess that many people get coupons online rather than digging through the paper these days, and it seems like a low-cost measure to promote Mission Viejo businesses.