Peary Court And Walmart’s Scrooges
By Rick Boettger
Hooray! Peary Court will remain crappy little buildings perfect for workforce housing, adding another 40 units in the process: a surprising triumph of our dysfunctional local politics. And some idiots defending Walmart in the Citizens’ Voice prompted me to do 5 minutes of “research” showing the Walton family to be unbelievably cheap in their lack of charitable giving.
The sad news about Peary Court is that we will not have upscale, high tax paying new homes there. Maybe you hate Truman Annex and Sunset Key, but, boy, do they pay more in taxes than they use in public services. We almost had two similar developments on Peary Court and Wisteria but both have gone down in flames.
The Annex and Sunset Key could not be built today. The same across America. We could never build an interstate highway system—we can’t even repair the one we’ve got. We can’t fly ourselves to the space station anymore, much less the moon. We could never build U.S. 1 to Key West—as an amusing thought experiment, think of what chance an extension down to the Dry Tortugas would have. Anyone seriously proposing it would be burned at the stake.
In the past we built the Hoover Dam and provided water to fifty million homes in a great climate that couldn’t have been there without the mountain water being brought to them. Now, California has entered what may be a permanent state of drought, while Canadian rivers pour oceans of fresh water uselessly into the Pacific and Beaufort Sea. Thousands of years ago Romans built their aqueducts, and 80 years ago we built our western irrigation canals, but today any similar projects would stand as much chance as my road to the Tortugas.
Similarly, we could emulate Europe’s tunnels by building one under the Rockies. We could stop global warming by safely spreading miniscule amounts of reflective materials high in the stratosphere. None of this too will ever happen. We are great at building gee-whiz electronics and flying war machines, and entertaining ourselves and the world. But permanent infrastructure? Affordable, senior, or homeless housing? Not here or nationally.
Locally, we’re great at one kind of building: beautiful offices for our government. Since I moved here, we’ve built or renovated the Harvey Government Center, The Gato Building, The Freeman Courthouse, everything in Courthouse Square, the NOAA building on White, and now Glynn Archer. Well over $100,000,000, money not spent on affordable housing for our workers.
So thank goodness that the Angela Street fence-loving, pitchfork-wielding neighbors paralyzed our building department for so long the Peary developers gave up, and we’ll have an oasis of workforce housing remaining in biking distance to service jobs downtown. This may be the model for resort communities everywhere, and I’m glad we’re leading the way.
Here’s the story on Walmart’s purported charitable giving, hidden fourth from the top on a Google search of “Walmart charity.” Forbes magazine reports that the giant Walton Family Foundation was largely funded by us, the taxpayers, as 60% of the $5 billion put into it was fancy inheritance tax avoidance by the founders, the late Sam and Helen Walton. They also funded another 39% with other trusts. The current generation, with a combined $140 billion in wealth, has so far contributed a whopping 1.2% of the money going into the foundation, most of that by the in-law, not the three kids.
These Waltons make Scrooge look beneficent. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have given 36% and 27% of their wealth to charity. The average middle class worker earning $50-99,000 gives 6% to charity. The immensely wealthy Waltons, who did nothing but have successful parents, give such a tiny percentage, 0.04%, that I have to explain it: proportionally, for every $1 a Walton gives, a middle-class American gives $150, and Bill and Warren give $79,000.
And what, indeed, does the Walton Family Foundation support? Its single biggest recipient, at a stunning $1.2 billion, is the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a 200,000 square foot “acropolis” built in, of course, Bentonville. So this is the story: the old Waltons give $3 billion as a tax dodge to their foundation, which spends over a third of that on a private vanity project in a city which is effectively their own back yard. Walmart responded to the Forbes story by effectively admitting it was all true.
Yes, any grocery store on Rockland Key will save driving time for folks living and working north of Key West. Good for them. But any Key West resident or worker venturing there, for shame!
[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]
Great perspective on the failure to tart up Peary Court and our deer-in-the-headlights inability to do much else in the way of benefit to local and national improvement projects. (Not that tarting up Peary Court would be an improvement.)
Am I the only one that reads pro-Wal-Mart comments in the citizen’s voice and think they came right out of Wal-Marts public relations department?
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
You bare saying exactly what I have been saying for the past 4 years, since moving to Key West. There is plenty of money for “affordable housing,” IF the city would stop wasting the money they have! In addition to building monuments to government, they need to trim their size and the amount paid to those that are left!
Also, all Wal-Mart will do nothing for the community, except add to the lack of affordable housing! The pay for their workers is one of the worst in the United States! They use their BILLIONS to build monuments to themselves using their TAX DEDUCTIBLE Trusts, instead of helping their employees and the communities.
The latest and largest example is the multi-million dollar ART MUSEUM built in Bentonville, AR. Alice Walton’s Trust paying the majority of this. What does a town of 40,000 people need with a “world class” Museum of American Art? The money could have been used to build the new schools that are needed, instead of the Tax Payers having to foot the bill.
Thank you for the article and research! Please keep re-posting!