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Well done, city council

Mark Whitman, Minot

Congratulations to the Minot City Council for maintaining a firm backbone against the forces of rampant capitalism.

When Walmart swaggered into town thinking they were just going to set up shop anywhere they felt like it, well, you said not so fast buddy.

You said “now that we see where you want to locate, well, maybe we want a part of that land for one of our future projects.” Walmart said “we weren’t aware of that but, now that we know, we’ll move our store.”

Next you demanded they change the look of their store and landscaping because Minot deserved better. Walmart said alright, we’ll make changes.

Then you demanded paving streets and buying stoplights. Walmart said OK, we can do that.

Then you delayed. “Let’s put them on hold,” you said.

The man from Walmart came to meet with city leaders. “If we agree to your requests (development agreement) can we expect city approval? If not we’ll withdraw our application now.”

Looks good, opined the mayor, “you’ve gone above and beyond.” Message from the city leaders seemed positive. Go for it they said.

So in their scheming devious way they did, trusting they had a deal, they ran to kick that football, but like Lucy holding for Charlie Brown you pulled it away at the last second. You should have seen the baffled “What did we do wrong?” look on the faces of Walmart engineers and representatives. Priceless.

Didn’t see that one coming, two years of planning, studying, testing and negotiating, poof, down the drain. What a great prank that was! Hopefully with just one or two more good pranks like that we can reduce traffic on north hill to zero!

It’s rumored that one jubilant Eagles Landing resident was overheard to exclaim “Wow, that was easy. I bet if we come down here often enough and yell loud enough we can control the whole city!”

In truth it’s not every city council that would have the resolve that you showed. You told that nasty Walmart you just take your $60,000,000 investment and your 300 jobs and your property taxes and your sales taxes and your cheap prices and get the heck out of town, we don’t need the likes of you around here.

Thank you city council for showing Walmart who’s boss in Minot. Just the way Marketplace Foods told you to.

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