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Coos County Board of Commissioners

Nikki Whitty

Kevin Stufflebean

Robert Main

City of Coquille

State of Jefferson

A Taxing Problem

 

The neighborhood where my wife and I lived in Syracuse, New York was predominately Italian.

Up the street was an Italian grocery store and from the porch where we lived a block away we could smell the cheeses and salamis hanging from the rafters. Right next door was an Italian bakery where in the mid 70s one could get a slice of pizza for a quarter. The odd ball on the block was the German restaurant across the street from where we lived. Kind of out of place, they had really good spätzle.

A few blocks from our neighborhood was an almost identical neighborhood, but Irish. There were a lot of little ethnic neighborhoods with their own kind of niche businesses. The businesses all had one thing in common: the owners were proud of what they had.

Every morning, in all of these little neighborhoods nearly the same scene was repeating itself throughout the City of Syracuse. With the scent of fresh baked goods in the air, the owner of the Italian bakery was out washing the façade on the front of his building. When he finished that, he swept the sidewalk. The business owners, or an employee of nearly every business in town was out doing the same things: tidying up, preparing to open for business. It was like a ritual. For the guy that owned the German restaurant, there was a small ritual involved as he washed the huge window in the front of his place every Saturday morning.

Business owners during that time and in that location seemed to have a different attitude as well. I think they really believed that “the customer is always right.” Most of the business owners went out of their way to be polite and they certainly went of their way to make sure that customers were satisfied.

I wish I could say that in general businesses in Coquille operated in a way similar to the way they did in Syracuse. Some do, but for the most part the statement just wouldn’t be true.

As someone who tries to shop locally as much as possible, the prospects for doing business in Coquille are dismal at best. Yes there are some merchants that have it going on where a person can walk in off the street and purchase a large variety of new items, but those merchants are the exception to the rule. The truth of the matter is that the majority of businesses in the downtown area do not sell new goods.

I’ve carried out my own little informal poll asking folks at random if they shop downtown. Oddly enough the most common answer was “Why in the hell would I do that?”

The number one complaint among those I spoke with was the fact that there are few places to purchase new goods. Given that, here are some observations I’ve made regarding local businesses over the years living in Coquille.

If I was in your business and it took longer for you to wait on me than it does for me to drive to Coos Bay you lose. I try to be patient. However, my time is just as important to me as yours was to you when you were talking on the telephone to your wife, son, daughter, mother, father, or other delusional party. And by the way – if no one has told you, you only get one shot at it. I’m not likely to comeback.

If I came into your business and you had a bad attitude, that’s too bad. If sniveling about the lack of customers purchasing the junk you have on your shelves is more important to you than the live customer you had before you and providing a pleasant experience - c'est la vie.

I really can’t say enough about the lack of general merchandise in Coquille. Unfortunately, many of the merchants in our city have come to the conclusion that the customer isn’t always right. If a customer goes into a junk store in Coquille and doesn’t make a purchase many of the proprietors will make the decision that the customer is bad rather than they don’t have anything to sell. What a business model that is.

In the past year the business community has tried (feebly) to bring in more customers. For some it has been successful. For others it never will be. It seems more business owners are willing to look externally for an answer to their woes than look internally, where the problem actually lies. In the past year, the business community has finally decided it was worth their time to attend urban renewal meetings, which have been taking place for ten years. It’s a step forward, but most business owners are interested only in what urban renewal can “give them,” not what must be done in return.

Earlier this year in an urban renewal meeting I heard the first catch phrase uttered. “There’s a new dynamic downtown,” Jean Ivey said. From my perspective it’s “The same old saw.” Business owners are asking what can be done for then, rather than what they can do for themselves. The latest buzz words heard locally are “forward thinking.” That’s what a proposal to enact a transient room tax has been called by proponents. Forward thinking would be business organizations assessing their members a fee to pay for promotions, not enacting a tax involving only two businesses in town.

Monday evening, the Coquille City Council will again take up the issue of the transient room tax to be used to promote the city in statewide publications. I could actually get behind a transient room tax under the right circumstances – this ain’t it.

Without the RiverWalk, pool, shopping center, fishing, etc. there’s nothing to advertise. I also have reservations about the Coquille Chamber of Commerce, The Coquille Merchants Association and Operation Coquille, who have requested the tax. In the first place, had any of these organizations broken with the traditional state of confusion I might feel better about it. The fact of the matter is, not one of these organizations can look back at the past year and point to any kind of success.

Gay 90s is a flop and has drifted rudderless for years. An October whatever it was, Community Celebration, was an even bigger flop. That might be attributable to advertising two different dates for the event. Could be it was held too late in the season. It doesn’t really matter.

Whatever the reason for the business failures in Coquille, the mistakes that have been made, the failure of business owners to evaluate their businesses and business plans, and the current circumstances, do not inspire confidence that any tax money generated would not be better used to create a warming fire.

Robert Jump
Editor

Opinions and letters to the editor are encouraged. Submit them to editor@coquillecommunitynews.com