Alturas

[bill london <london@moscow.com>]

As the Daily News front-page article yesterday (July 1) explains well,
the Alturas Tech Park next to Tidymans is "drifting."  The choice we now
face is to decide if Alturas will be the high-tech park it was built
as--or that if it will be allowed to become a tax-supported professional
mall.
    The original message given to Moscow taxpayers five years ago was
that high-tech companies were "graduating" from the UI Incubator and
needed this Alturas Park as their next location.  If the tax-payers
underwrote the park through a complex financing scheme, then those
businesses would stay in town.
    Now we learn (from Barbara Richardson, director of the local
economic development agency) that the premise on which our tax money was
spent is "ludicrous."  The demand from high-tech businesses able to
afford a move to Alturas just is not there, she said.
    So, we have already started sliding down the slippery slope to more
sprawl, more corporate welfare, and our continued tax support for office
space away from downtown for lawyers, accountants, stock brokers, and
soon I imagine, dentists, doctors, maybe even professional writers.
After all, any business can be viewed as high-tech if computers are
involved in it, right?
    I think it's time to stop this slide.  Let's tighten up the rules to
make this high-tech park what it was designed to be.  If we fill it up
with offices, we won't have it if a real high-tech business wants to
locate here.
    I just do not want my tax money supporting a stock broker's move out
of downtown.
    BL