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Originally Posted by Gunner75  Made in the USA. You need to pull your head out. Face what is fact.
If it wasn't for the packing plants, this would be a ghost town compared to what it is now.
Lets say tomarrow you could flip a switch. No Hispanics, no plants. GONE.
By Friday, 1/3 of the small business in DC would be thinking about it real hard. That is, what are we going to do.
It goes on an on. You can have the Dodge City that was here before the plants were. "we were doing fine" Without what you have now, the biggest thing here is ag. Look at what it is doing. There are businesses here that have more than 30 employees, a dozen or so.
Cut your fast food joints in 1/2. Cut Bogners profit of beer sales in 1/2 or more. Taxes would suck. Take the business away, take the people away, do you think those who have been making desisions lately are going to cut back. NO, they would eventually have to do so, but they are not going to want to do that.
Folks this is huge. Once a town has a business as such in place and it removed, many thing suffer. As mentioned before, it trickles down.
I would hate to think what would happen if you just removed the workers.
I like it here, I don't like everything about it that is for sure. Dodge City is a small town in my world. I have worked with towns 3 times this size, and the impact of taking something away, or trying to replace workers in this enviorment is never a good thing. It has a huge impact on everything. It just keeps rolling down hill.
On another note. Install the Ethonal plant here. What impact does that have with the plants in place and nothing changed about Dodge. It is simple. The Ethonal plant will further starve our water situation. The packing plants use, per head, per day, in each plant, 1500 gallons per head to process that beef. That is a lot of water being used already.
Install a water starving Ethonal plant, and we have a water problem the following summer. Can't water our grass, because we are trying to make Ethonal. There is no benifit to Ethonal as it stands right now. It will take taxpayers $.55 per gallon to produce it, let alone the 3 gallons of water per gallon of usable Ethonal. It doesn't create many jobs. It takes about 6 people, give or take a couple to run it. The rest are truck drivers, and at the estimated 40 drivers, not many of them will live in Dodge. The Ethonal situation needs to evolve more before it is profitable, resorce managable, overall a replacement for foreign oils.
The casino stands to have a huge impact on the area. I have not researched this at this point, but I have some actual fact numbers from the Topeka area casino's before and after. It will take some time to pull them, and break it down. |
"Pull my head out"???
I have been a citizen of Dodge City for over 40 years. I know all of the ins and outs of this town. All the politics, the things that happen that never get mentioned or published, the economy, the local business owners, the crimes, you name it!
As for the "small businesses", most of them have been driven out of town by the so called "economic development". How many people have been busted because of the "Wall-of-China-Mart"? How many have severely suffered because your packing plants don't do their business locally, but rather buy from suppliers from out of town?
Seems like we could cut our fast food joints in half, as we have too many anyway. We used to have some good restaurants, where you could get good food, and the servants could understand what you wanted because they could speak ENGLISH!
Taxes would actually be lower, as we would not need all of the infrastructure to support all of the influx of illegals. Our drivers would have licenses and insurance. Our County Health Department would not be the "free clinic" for illegals. Our Welfare offices would not be supporting illegals, that have jobs and drive big new vehicles. Our medical services and hospital would actually get paid for services rendered. We would not be building a new school every year. We would have teachers that liked their jobs and salaries. We would not have to bus kids all over town to schools. Our environmental problems would be less expensive. Our wastewater plant would not be overloaded with grease, blood, and high BOD/COD. We would not have an illegal company, ie Chamness, dumping CRAP into our environment without even having permission or a permit to do it. We could actually walk the streets and feel safe. We wouldn't be having to paint over graffiti all the time. Our police force would not be overburdened. The gang and drug problems would be either non-existent or at least a more minor problem.
The packing plants use 1500 gallons of water per head, as you stated. Hell, that is more than an ethanol plant would utilize. The ethanol boom is about to go into the 'crapper' anyway. You cannot produce ethanol without using more energy than is gained from the ethanol. Plus, you have increased pricing of grain, which in turn affects cattle feeders, and consumers in general. Also, freight costs stack up in bringing in grain, and hauling spent mash out. Ethanol supplies lower energy content to the fuel than oil, thus you are spending more money to get less energy from the fuel. Doesn't make sense without the government subsidies.
The casino should bring in some economic development. However, I think it would do better, in a better "environment". Do you want to go to a destination casino where the air smells, the town is dirty, and you could get mugged just going to your motel?? I can think of better places to go. Of course, if you just "flip that switch", things would get better immediately!