Let’s not miss another opportunity to defeat what the rich bastards in Kent County want to do in the future

On Monday, MLive posted an article entitled, Smaller venues want a cut of tax approved for Grand Rapids amphitheater, soccer stadium. 

The article cites a few of the smaller venue owners, which is great, but provides more comment from Kent County Commissioners. I find it puzzling that the Kent County Commissioners were given so much space to talk about this matter, event though they are the same body that approved the August 6th ballot initiative to expand from 5% to 8% of the hotel tax in the first place. It is also somewhat disingenuous for these commissioners to sound like they care about the viability of smaller venues, when they knew very well that the Grand Action 2.0 proposed ballot initiative would not benefit the smaller music venues.

I also saw a response on social media to the MLive article linked above, where someone asks why people supported the hotel tax increase in the first place. Well, the August 6th ballot initiative did not get overwhelming approval. According to the Kent County Clerk’s office, 65,909 people voted in favor, but 56,976 voted against the hotel tax increase. This is pretty amazing, especially when you consider that the Destination Kent Committee had raised nearly a half a million dollars in just a few short months, which allowed them to spend hundreds of thousands on radio ads, online ads and mailers.

Imagine if there would have been a organized campaign to oppose the hotel tax increase or a campaign to change the language of it to allow for smaller venues to benefit. Imagine if the those who are owners of the smaller venues cited in the MLive article – Four Star Theater, the Pyramid Scheme or the Intersection – were organized with the community, what could have collectively been done to defeat the Grand Action 2.0 ballot initiative?

I have heard numerous people say that in the future, we cannot let groups like Grand Action 2.0 and their friends at the GR Chamber of Commerce create ballot initiatives or manipulate local politicians into using millions in public dollars to finance development projects that will simply expand the wealth of those who are already millionaires and billionaires in this area. In fact, I think we should start organizing now to see how many people want to be ready to defeat any future development projects that transfers more wealth to those who think they run this community. Who wants in on this?