‘Predatory Mall Development’

The article on shopping malls Nov. 8 provided an excellent view of plans for the expansion and development of malls.

While the article mentioned how cities support predatory mall development in order to generate more sales tax revenues, it failed to emphasize the negative economic impacts of such support. When the cities seek to solve their budget problems by attracting shoppers from other cities, they foster a surplus of retail space. Even before the current recession, there were not enough customers to justify building all the shops that now stand vacant.

Although cities strive to generate sales tax revenues from the residents of other cities, they also drive away those non-resident shoppers by adopting exclusionary policies. For example, Thousand Oaks depends on the revenues from The Oaks mall and Westlake Auto Center, which could never succeed with only residents of Thousand Oaks as their customer base. On the other hand, this same city charges non-residents $55 to use its library and refuses to process applications for county marriage licenses or federal passports for residents of other cities or unincorporated Ventura County. Other cities in Ventura County have similar policies. They all want me to pay taxes to operate their municipal services, but they do not want me to use any of the services financed with my taxes.

This economic colonialism could be corrected by adopting a suggestion made by a Ventura County grand jury several years ago: Pool all sales tax revenues within Ventura County and apportion the money to the cities by population. This would stop the wasteful building of surplus shopping centers. It would also mean that, while exclusionary policies might not end, the cities where the shoppers live would then receive a fair share of the sales tax revenues generated by their residents.

DAVID E. ROSS

Oak Park