The biggest issue facing the city of Tracy is economic development. We need to develop a solid and reliable tax base. We need for large and small businesses to move to Tracy and bring good-paying and professional employment with them. We do not need more warehouse and forklift driver positions.
The recent good news is that Amazon is moving to Tracy. However, most of those jobs will be for warehouse, dock handlers and forklift drivers. For many of us that went and got an education, what are we to do, drive a forklift and throw our degrees in the trashcan?
Tracy is ideal for large and small companies because of our location and access to rail and truck facilities.
For years our city leaders failed us and were wrapped up in the Tracy Real Estate Industrial Complex until it collapsed.
Only because of the past boom years of real estate do we have a healthy city savings account. Otherwise we would have ended up like Stockton, bankrupt, having to cut police, fire, city employees and all the benefits including medical.
Raising taxes to play for police, fire and city employment benefits just goes so far.
We need to send a clear message to our City Council — get your head out of the sand and do your jobs.
While, as pointed out below, there is nothing wrong with warehouse jobs, we have 50 bazillion of those here. What is wrong is that there is no balance in our workforce. Does it have to be nothing but retail and warehouse jobs?
The city has all these greenie pipe dreams. One of them is to have more of our residents work here instead of driving 50 miles to the bay area as most do. If that is really what is wanted, it wont be acheived by bringing in more warehouses. The folks driving over the hill are not doing so for retail and warehouse jobs.