An article from the Summer 2002 issue of Michigan Privatization Report proved prescient. A follow-up by Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, eight years later is trying to warn officials in Kalamazoo not to repeat their folly.
The 2002 commentary, written by Ray Wilson, former Kalamazoo County commissioner and founder of the Kalamazoo County Tax Payers Association, explained that subsidizing a grocery store in an area of the city where three private enterprises had already failed did not make sense.
In this Kalamazoo Gazette Op-Ed, LaFaive points out that Wilson was right and why city, state and federal officials should not make the same mistake again.
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