Trouble in a Small Town As a Gas Station Being Built Hits the Sheetz

The one thing I’ve learned about small-time politics is that while the number of people that reside within an area may be smaller than statewide or national scenes, the pettiness can be even more vindictive, and the whining is every bit as loud as anything blaring 24/7 on cable news. 

Yet, I find it just as amusing as anything you’ll see covered on the national landscape. 

I know it’s been a minute since I’ve written about the town where I live. But this story has grabbed my attention because some of the citizens are ready to grab their pitchforks and take down those who want to see progress in this little, four square mile town that has fewer than 15,000 people.

Over what you may ask? 

Knocking down a building that’s over a hundred years old and falling apart, and putting up a brand new gas station.

Thrilling, right?

I have written about my hometown Fraser here before, about some hanky-panky of settling lawsuits that were quite frivolous. 

The bare-bones basis of the lawsuit was that the ladies all felt that they should be paid more money than they were currently earning. All three were “at will” employees and could have left the city to work elsewhere, at any time, to earn a more acceptable wage in their eyes. They instead chose to sue the city they worked for.

Two of these three ladies, Kelly and Michelle, had sued the city due to circumstances surrounding a sexual harassment case the city was involved in from a former elected official. That settlement happened back in October of 2019, with Kelly and Michelle each garnering $85,000 each, in a settlement reached by all parties. I wrote about that incident right here at Red State at that time. Sex Harassment Lawsuit Was Just Settled for Close to 300k in Fraser, Michigan. Here Is the Proof.

The wage lawsuit, which was put to bed back in January of this year, paid Kelly and Christina $95,000, and they both agreed to resign their positions with the city. One of the key points here is that they both agreed to R-E-S-I-G-N to get the cash; they were not fired.

To give you a brief description of what the lawsuits were about here, that the council at the time ultimately settled: Female employees believed they weren’t getting paid enough in their positions and were being discriminated against because of their female attributes. So, instead of doing what most people would do–which would be applying to another city that maybe had positions open that they felt they could fill–and get more money, they sued. 

I’m sure they made Gloria Allred stand up and cheer.

In addition to the city having to settle on a sexual lawsuit case a couple of years before this above event occurred, I’m a bit shocked that anyone would ever consider coming to this town to open a new business let alone spend millions of dollars to do so.

Yet, here we are.

The family-owned business Sheetz, which has a successful track record on the East Coast, is expanding to the Midwest. It has picked locations in my home state of Michigan, with my hometown being one of those locations. 

They picked it right in the middle of town, which some consider the downtown area but, of course, in a small town of four square miles, a downtown area is a little bit of a ridiculous assertion. It’s cute to say that, but it’s not a thing in reality. Unless your version of reality includes  Dorothy clicking her ruby red shoes and getting back to Kansas safe and sound.

A bank that is over 100 years old currently sits there and will need to be torn down to build this new location. That’s where I believe most of the opposition comes from.

A lot of people who live in this town somehow feel good when driving by a building that’s been abandoned multiple times over the past decade, and is extremely costly to renovate. I was told by an expert in the field, just the other day, that the cost to just replace the fire suppression system and bring it up to code would be over a million dollars. That does not include any of the other renovations that would need to be done before an occupancy permit would be granted.

Now, an effort is being made via social media to save the bank with someone else’s money (never the dough of the people who scream the loudest), or come up with some other scheme to get another business to put up shop there. The ideas that have been floated range from a mausoleum to an animal shelter or a cricket-racing stadium.

Of course, none of these ideas make sense or are plausible because the building will come down, no matter what eventually goes up in that location. 

The main criticism of those looking at this a bit more realistically is that this would make a third gas station on the southwest corner of the same intersection, where there are already two gas stations on the northwest and the northeast corners. Yet, this complaint flies in the face of the free market and businesses competing.

Those who argue that there will be too much traffic have no traffic studies to offer as proof. Those who claim that one of the other gas stations will go out of business also have no background or data to offer that this will occur.

 What they have are feelings–and while we all have them, the response to people putting their feelings over a successful company’s well-thought-out plan looking for approval, to spend millions of dollars in an area that has been neglected for years, defies logic.

Emotions are so high and crazy right now, one gal put this out as a veiled threat…

If Council approves that piece of Sheetz at 14 & Utica, it’s gonna be on

I, of course, being a curious bloke, asked her what was going to be on. Upon further investigation, I was able to deduce she was a Biden supporter, and the climb from her parents’ basement was too much of an obstacle for anything to happen.

Sheetz has thankfully scheduled a meet and greet in town on Thursday, to try and answer some of the questions some people–who are actually of goodwill–might have. I hope it helps, if people are willing to listen.

However, as we have seen the past three-and-a-half years with Biden, Inc. in charge, the country is all wound up and emotional over the dumbest things.

I posted a quick podcast supplement on this, which goes a bit more in-depth; you can listen to here or below.

This post was originally published on this site