Revenue: Letting Business Opportunity Knock in La Mirada

I want to commend La Mirada City Councilmen Wayne Rew and Pete Dames for their logical support of having a Big 5 Sporting Goods store go in at the corner of La Mirada Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue. It’s too bad they were outvoted 3-2 on the issue.

If an upscale restaurant isn’t interested in building there (and three years is a more than adequate time gauge), then it behooves the council to welcome with open arms a big company that is willing to locate to our great city. The council is on record as adoring taxation, which is used to pay for its beloved La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. Then it turns around and snubs the sales tax dollars that would be generated by Big 5, an amount estimated by city officials to be $20,000 to $50,000 a year. That could easily pay for all the yearly junkets the council members take to such places as Orlando, (Fla.), Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, wouldn’t it?

I must chastise Councilmen C. David Peters, Bob Chotiner and Hal Malkin for their tunnel vision in rejecting Big 5 Sporting Goods.

Especially irksome is Malkin’s anti-business posture here, since he is a businessman in this community. It is obvious that his judgment is blurred by his affection and connection to the La Mirada theater and his desire to have a restaurant adjacent to the theater. He’d rather have an empty lot than guaranteed sales-tax revenue.

I would like to raise one rhetorical question: Are we really better served when politicians and bureaucrats determine who can do business and who can’t?

MATTHEW J. PIAZZA

La Mirada