Help make Clearlake a ghost town.

The plan is simple: Use local taxpayer money to provide soil, sewer, water and utilities to lure big out-of-town corporations to the undeveloped areas of Clearlake, thus putting existing local services out of business!

Many of these big businesses are chains and will bring in their own employees and management teams, so the underemployed and fresh-out-of-school youth will be encouraged to leave the county for better opportunities.

Although local officials could enact zoning that ensures new businesses could not open within a set distance from an already established business (of the same type), this might not be as advantageous to the interloper. For instance, when Starbucks and Barnes & Noble expanded their outlets, they often made sure to land right on top of a neighborhood store expressly to steal their business.

The new store should be located very close to the old store, within shouting distance if possible. Natural selection will pressure existing businesses to fold, in many cases directing profits away from the community to the larger chain. To establish the new corporate pattern quickly, the first targets should be stores that have reliably provided goods and services to the community for years – like introducing a Super Wal-Mart to compete with Rays and IGA for food; or Lowe's competing with Mendo Mill and Four Corners for hardware supplies.

The clever part is getting local taxpayers to pay for upgrading systems like water and sewer for the new business, even if this is done at a loss to the community. (Pure genius, getting the locals to pay for the store’s cost of doing business!) And if the new giant construction kills wildlife or leaks a bit of poison into the soil … well, the county can clean it up later.

If you like the idea of abandoning Lakeshore Boulevard and shopping at cookie-cutter national chains, be sure to attend the public hearing on the proposed Lowe's hardware store in Clearlake, to be held on Thursday, Jan. 7, at 6 p.m. at the Clearlake City Hall, 14050 Olympic Drive (corner of Lakeshore and Olympic).

Express your support for destroying local business by calling Clearlake City Council members at 707-994-8201: Curt Giambruno (Extension 151), Chuck Leonard (Extension 152), Joyce Overton (Extension 153), Roy Simons (Extension 154) and Judy Thein (Extension 155).

Janis Paris lives in Clearlake Oaks.