Dear editor,
Your socialist city of Milton is continuing its over-the-top regulation of individually, locally owned businesses.
It seems the city planning director, Randy Jorgenson, feels he and the city have the right to determine how your money can be spent and [how] your property [is] used in town.
I was under the impression that if a heavy industry business wanted to open, it would need to do so in one of our industrial parks, which makes total sense. But the micromanaging of normal retail businesses is not up to the city.
The city has absolutely no business telling a commercial property owner in the city of Milton what type of retail business they can and can't open. The investor determines how he wants to invest his money in a business, not the city.
If wanting to open a restaurant, the number of existing restaurants has no bearing on this property owner and willingness to invest. The city doing so is protectionism of existing restaurants.
If the investor feels the restaurant can produce a better product at a cheaper price, is this not the very basic element of the free-enterprise system that determines the success of any business, and thus the investment!
Randy's and the city's backup tactic is to throw all these city-imposed costs at the investor, such as increasing a water-line size with an outrageous connection fee to an already existing building because Randy, who is not an engineer himself, says the smaller line doesn't meet the business' needs.
One property owner called Randy's bluff and hired an engineer, proving Randy and the city wrong, allowing him to open his restaurant.
It is these tactics of Randy and the city of Milton that has left our city as a business ghost town while city government has thrived with these costly so-called city regulations on existing and new businesses.
Property and business owners should write in and express their own experiences regarding the city's tactics.
STEVEN KING
Milton
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This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Blame ‘socialist’ practices for ‘business ghost town’