Palatine not friendly enough to business

It was disappointing to read Palatine Mayor Rita Mullins' comments on her goal for 2009 - elimination of the local Sears store, along with jobs and tax revenue, to be replaced with a village municipal complex.

All this just a few short years after the village gave Sears its blessing to modernize and convert the old Kmart into a new Sears Essentials store.

It's hard to forget the village council's recent berating of the Aldi grocery store chain's representatives when they had the audacity to propose spending nearly $1 million to renovate the unused and decrepit half of the same strip mall that Sears occupies on Hicks Road.

Had the village operated in good faith with Aldi, we would have a viable Sears and Aldi providing needed jobs and products to the surrounding community plus tax revenue to the village. This was traded for the prospect of spending lots of tax money on a village complex with little or no return to the community.

With the tax revenue decline brought by the closing of Linens and Things and the imminent departures of Menard's and Whole Foods for greener pastures in Lake County, the village council should be receptive to new businesses (like Aldi) and accommodating to existing ones (like Sears), instead of driving them away only to have them set up shop in nearby communities.

Daniel J. Sowa

Palatine