Written/Posted by Drew Magill

June 13, 2024

Take a dying coal town with hundreds of unemployed miners, thousands of acres of abandoned mine lands and all the streams polluted by acid mine drainage.

Have a self serving chamber of commerce form an economic development organization to attract new jobs so local businesses have customers.

Enlist the service clubs, churches, school district and local newspaper to unquestioningly support the program.

Don’t bother to attract jobs for college graduates. The resulting brain drain ensures that a poorly informed/involved public won’t oppose the development strategy.

Have this development organization recruit “footloose” industries fleeing New Jersey because of strict environmental regulations and high taxes.

Give these bottom feeders tax breaks and industrial parks with roads and utilities in place (paid for by tax payers).

Allow these polluters to poison the air and ground water and dump their toxic wastes into old stripping pits.

Let them leave to go south or overseas in search of even cheaper labor. This gives the development organization a reason to stay in business rather than working their way out of existence.

Use the state KOZ program, which gives tax breaks as an incentive to conserve open space and recycle abandoned mine land, to site the new KOZ’s. Do this on pristine, globally rare pitch pine barrens. Call this undeveloped land “raw” or “empty” implying that it is going to waste.

Fill these industrial parks with unskilled, low paying warehouse jobs.

Fill these jobs with hopeful immigrants willing to work for low wages.

Create a backlash from long-time residents and foster community turmoil. These disgruntled nativists form the backbone of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, giving the town a reputation as a racist community.

When the KOZ program expires begin offering LERTA tax breaks to such companies as Amazon. This causes property taxes to soar.

Watch as a housing shortage causes rents to soar for poorly paid newcomers. Watch as overcrowded schools cause the need for new schools, further raising property taxes.

Growth without progress has not created a prosperous community. The majority of public school children live below the poverty line. Dropout rates are up and many young men opt to be gang members and drug dealers rather than work in a warehouse. While tensions in the community are subsiding, there is resentment at what the developers have done to the town while making money off the backs of workers.

The good news, ironically, is that enterprising newcomers have started to revitalize the community. They have started new small businesses in the largely abandoned downtown. Like the eastern and southern Europeans that came here to work in the coal mines, future generations of newcomers will contribute their talents and ambition to America.

Thus the selfish effort of community leaders to exploit workers and degrade the environment had an unintended result. It gave a new start to the area, thanks to the newcomers and not the old guard, which is dying off.

P.S. Any guess which town I’m referring to?