by Mike Hillman
To heck with Economic Development; it is an economic stimulus I’m after. Each year since 1996, the City of Ely paid $48,000.00 dollars to the Ely Area Economic Development Agency for economic development to our area. They have been doing this for fifteen years now, and in all that time, if anyone can tell me anything the EADA has really done for economic development anywhere near the city of Ely, I’d like to hear about it. This blogger is glad the council decided to pull Ely’s share of the funding for the EADA. If I had my way, I’d take the forty eight thousand dollars and divide it equally among every man, woman, and child living within the city limits. I would pay this in Ely Bucks that can only be spent in Ely. If there are three thousand people living here then each person living in Ely would get $160.00 in Ely bucks to spend as they see fit. Nobody would be able to make a mortgage payment or take a long vacation, but I bet a lot of local merchants would love to see three thousand people strutting the streets of town with a fist full of Ely Bucks. We pay the money once a year each March when the town needs as much stimulating as it can get, and we do this each and every year. It could be the start of a campaign to bring people to town, because we could honestly say that it pays to live in Ely.
Leave a Reply