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Lydia DePillis says the Walmart community benefits agreement is nothing to write home about:
So, it finally happened: Yesterday, Walmart and the mayor’s office announced the community benefits agreement—except termed a “community partnership initiative”—that Vince Gray had long promised as a way of creating the impression that he was actually trying to get the retailer to commit to anything upon its entry into the city. The cynics among us never expected it to amount to anything, really. And they were right: Every bullet point in the five-page document is either something Walmart is required to do by law, something it had already committed to do in earlier discussions, or something that commits it to absolutely nothing.
Creating and funding a retail job training program? Done. Transportation demand management measures like Bikeshare stations? Already negotiated as part of the large tract review process. Job fairs, inclusion of small businesses within the store, and the promise to not sell guns? Announced on day one. It’s great Walmart says it will do those things, but the Mayor got not one iota more from the company out of his super-secret negotiations over the last year.
Read the rest at Housing Complex.