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Name: Whitehall, Michigan
Age: 151
Occupation: city in west Michigan
Last Seen: near Muskegon
Bee-otched For: making it tough to prevent a new Walmart from coming to town
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Looks like the town of Whitehall, Michigan, pop. 2,700 will lose some major businesses.
True, it's right next door to Montague, pop. 2,300, people are already kissing its small-town charm goodbye.
A few months ago, news that Walmart would be coming to the community erupted and people took to the streets, protesting the move-in. Now, the city has approved the retailer's move-in and they're making it tough for residents to voice their opinion on it.
It now costs $1,650 to voice your opinion against Walmart in Whitehall.
The reason, according to the city is because of all the legal costs attached to the measure. Last week when WOOD-TV 8 hunted down city commissioners, only one spoke out about the measure.
I wouldn't be too surprised that Walmart is paying the city to build their store and is paying them hush money to do so. What's sad is that between the two towns, there's only three grocers: local chains Plumb's and Montague Foods and a Save-a-Lot, a discount grocer. Walmart is a threat to the community and its tax dollars since the average store costs a community $900,000 per year in taxes since all of their employees qualify for assistance.
Folks, this is why we need to support local. It sucks that where I'm at, the only "local" store is Meijer and they're a big box chain. If I lived closer to local stores, I'd shop there more often. But thanks to people thinking that bigger is better, that's no longer the case.
Whitehall, we hardly knew ye.
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