In the past few months, I have seen Sweetwater take some very positive steps toward being more pro-business.

The mayor and the Economic Development Board and Interstate 75 Committee have come up with a number of ideas and made numerous contacts, including keeping in constant touch with Goody's to help ensure that store in its new form came back to town about a year after it left.

Most of the people on the Economic Development Board and Interstate 75 Committee are volunteers. If some of them charged the city/taxpayers for all the hours they put in trying to help the community, the cost would run into the thousands of dollars. Thank heavens Tamra Chaney has not brought a bill into City Hall for all the legwork she has done on numerous projects, most recently the biodisel initiative.

One thing I would like to see is better communication between the city's Economic Development Board and the City Commission. On a positive note, I do see more efforts on both sides to bring that about. But there is no point in the Economic Board spending all this time and effort on projects the commission is never going to fund and I think communication will help in that regard.

Let's face it, the city did not spend a lot of money on innovative ideas and economic development years ago when there was more money in the city coffers, it's sure not going to happen now when city budgets everywhere are suffering. It's evident the Economic Development Board realizes that now.

And while I like the idea of contacting businesses and putting out the welcome mat no matter how small the companies might be, I don't want to see the city give up on landing big industry.
There is a strong belief among many in the community that there are "people in power" who don't want a very large industry here because they fear giving up control. Now we can argue all day over who those people are and whether that is true, but the fact is that belief runs strong in this community.

And to be perfectly honest, I have heard some city leaders past and present say they'd rather not have a very large industry in Sweetwater. Generally two reasons are given for this.
First, I've heard people say it is better to have a bunch of small, diverse industries so the town does not go belly up if the one big plant shuts down.

I am all for a diverse business base. Nobody in their right mind would argue against that. But don't you want a big plant or plants, too? I can't see the logic in the fear of getting a big plant because it might shut down. If you follow that logic, why don't we just not get out of bed in the morning because a big fire might torch the town? Ridiculous logic. Utterly ridiculous.

What if Loudon didn't want the Maremont plant 40 years ago because of that fear? Folks, we are almost shut down now with unemployment running 15 to 19 percent the past year. A lot of the small industries in town have laid off workers as well. Being small does not always make you immune to bad times.

I think I'd rather take my chances. Besides, if a plant that worked 600 people came here, Sweetwater wouldn't supply the whole workforce anyway. No matter what the unemployment rate is, people would come from everywhere to work here if the pay was decent. How is it much different from a plant that works 600 coming to Vonore? Why is that OK and having the plant in Sweetwater is not?
Maybe some say they don't want large plants because they really think Sweetwater can't get one? Maybe it's like if I had said in high school, "I don't like to date cheerleaders."

No doubt there are some types of plants Sweetwater could never land and nobody is landing too many in the current economy. And just because the city's industrial park is filled up, that does not preclude a large industry or commercial business from coming here. They can buy land from an individual.

But I'd be darned if I'd say I didn't want a large factory or factories to come here.
Finally, I have heard city leaders and several citizens say it is bad to have one big industry in town because that business can control the town. They point to a few decades ago when Sweetwater was a hosiery mill town as a case in point.

But I doubt the business climate would allow for that today. In other words, if we got some giant company here, it might be foreign-owned. The company might donate money to our arts programs, but otherwise not try to control the city perhaps as some family-owned company could theoretically or did years ago. Many companies are good corporate citizens.

I have not meant to be as cynical as I probably sound. I see a lot of good things going and I can usually see both sides to any argument. But there are a couple of arguments that have gone on here for years that I simply do not understand.

tommy.millsaps@advocateanddemocrat.com | 337-7101