Will Wal-Mart be voted into existence due to weighty report?
To the Editor,

The Town of Bath could save itself a lot of money if it just goes to the website http://www.walmartmovie.com/ There you can read about the effect Wal-Mart has on small town business.

The real question here is not whether Bath wants a Wal Mart, but whether Bath wants a downtown. If, as one writer has implied, there is nothing in downtown Bath worth saving, then perhaps it doesn't matter. But it really is old news that when Wal-Mart comes into the outskirts of a town, the main street dies.

And when the developers and the town talk about the State Environmental Quality Review, people of Bath should be alerted this is just a bureaucratic process that is stacked in favor of the developer. All the lead agent has to do is take a "hard look" at the project and come up with a decision. The "hard look" usually means drowning everyone in a sea of paperwork so boring the lead agent doesn't even bother to read it -- they just vote to approve it based on the weight of the report. That is what happened with the windmills and that is what will happen with the Wal-Mart store.

Ruth Matilsky

Prattsburgh