Stop Walmart's Expansion in Milpitas! Planning Commission to Meet March 24 at 7:00 PM

On March 24, 2010, at 7:00 P.M. at the Milpitas City Hall, the Milpitas Planning Commission will decide whether or not to grant Walmart's application for design and conditional use permits to expand into a supercenter. The Commission will also need to decide whether to certify the environmental impact review (EIR) for the proposal. According to the EIR, Walmart plans to expand the store by 19,000 square feet. Together with a proposed conversion of 14,000 square feet of general merchandise sales space to grocery sales, the proposed new grocery department would total 33,000 square feet, or three-quarters of an acre. Pending approval of its conditional use permit application, Walmart also plans to stay open twenty-four hours per day and to sell alcoholic beverages on-site until 2 A.M. each morning.

During the draft EIR comment period, nearly 300 area residents wrote letters to city planners expressing concern for Walmart's corporate practices. The National Association of Working Women (9 to 5) also chimed in to oppose Walmart's application. The concerns expressed are well justified. According to an August 2006 article by Charles Fishman in the journal Academy of Management Perspectives, Walmart has engaged in such practices as locking employees in stores overnight, hiring illegal immigrants, and forcing employees to punch out and then keep working. According to an article by Wayne F. Cascio in the same issue of the journal, Walmart underpays its employees so much and provides them with such inferior benefits packages that a typical Walmart store costs the federal government over $420,000 each year in benefits to employees' families. Finally, because Walmart has such a negative impact on the overall economic health of communities, Fishman notes that in 2005, Walmart destroyed 127,500 jobs in this country in the process of creating 125,000 jobs. Thus, Walmart's claim that its proposed Milpitas expansion will create 75 new jobs hardly justifies granting the store its requested permits.

According to the EIR, the store's market area currently has no excess demand for grocery items. Therefore, conventional grocery stores in the area are likely to be negatively impacted. While the EIR, which was funded by Walmart and completed by CBRE Consulting, predicts that Walmart's entry into the market area will not cause existing grocery stores to close, sales losses by those stores will likely lead to lay-offs. Even more concerning, according to a study by public policy and economic experts Marlon Boarnet and Randall Crane (http://www.coalitiontlc.org/big_box_study.pdf), the entry of big box stores into the grocery market frequently drives down wages and benefits packages for employees at conventional grocery stores. The EIR states that increased population growth will absorb some of the excess grocery supply in the market area created by Walmart. However, the Planning Commission remains free to determine that rising demand for grocery items should be absorbed by existing unionized supermarkets, ethnic stores that contribute to the city's unique character, and local farmer's markets, which help limit global warming by reducing the distance that food travels between field and consumer.



Walmart's proposal raises a number of other concerns. For example, the EIR warns that increased traffic congestion will be a “significant unavoidable adverse impact” of the expansion. The company's plans to convert existing general merchandise sales space to grocery sales will also cause the City to lose an estimated $60,000 in annual sales tax revenues. Discrimination is another concern. The letter from 9 to 5 during the EIR comment period noted that Walmart receives numerous EEOC complaints each year for sex and race based discrimination. Gay rights are at issue, as well. Walmart has received one of the lowest corporate equality index ratings from the Human Rights Campaign of any company in the country. The corporation's rating in 2010 was only forty out of a possible of one hundred.

A number of area residents worry that allowing the store to remain open twenty-four hours per day and to sell alcoholic beverages on-site until 2 A.M. will lead to increased crime. The EIR notes that acting police chief Charlotte Peng stated in a letter to CBRE Consulting that the police department currently receives about 250 calls per year regarding incidents at the store. However, she does not predict that allowing the store to remain open an additional ten hours per day and to sell alcohol will result in increased crime. Peng provided no basis for her opinion. Common sense seems to dictate that crime will increase, especially where Walmart is notorious for failing to provide adequate parking lot security, as is documented in the film Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices, as well as in a study posted at http://walmartcrimereport.com/report.pdf.

According to Section XI-10-57.04 of the Milpitas Municipal Code, the Planning Commission can deny Walmart's conditional use permit application for any reason consistent with “public health, safety, peace, morals, comfort and welfare.” The Commission, therefore, has ample grounds on which to deny Walmart's permit application. The Commission can also permit a scaled-down version of Walmart's proposal, which the EIR describes as the environmentally preferred alternative. Finally, the Commission could place any special permit conditions that it pleases on Walmart, including a requirement that the store provide night time security patrols to protect the public and to reduce strain on local police forces. However, the Commission will not do any of these things if members of the public fail to flex their muscle by showing up to the Planning Commission hearing to counter Walmart's own statements about the merits of its proposal. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, please turn up on March 24 to tell the Planning Commission why Walmart is bad for Milpitas. Invite a friend and make an evening of it. Together we CAN Stop Walmart!