On August 23 the Springfield News Leader published an “Our View” piece entitled, “Rockaway citizens deserve better than silly, half-baked ideas.” Sadly however, while ridiculing the specific ideas presented at a recent meeting between the Taney County Commission and Rockaway Beach, the unnamed editorial gurus who wrote the piece didn’t suggest any ideas, let alone one, that in their opinion, was a better idea or met what they allege is the “key” to what Rockaway needs.
The last paragraph of the piece said that the “ideas all missed the need for full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal. And that’s unfortunate because Rockaway citizens are still enamored with the idea of a casino, a bad fit for the Ozarks. There are better answers. The key is to help Rockaway find them, not to draw laughs with outlandish proposals.”
Well golly gee whiz, so the key is to help Rockaway Beach find “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal.” An Ole Seagull would suggest one additional criterion, the “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal” should also be “good paying.” Let’s go up the road, about 18 minutes and 11, miles to our area’s economic epicenter, the city of Branson. Surely its economy is based on a foundation of good paying “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal.” Isn’t it?
Not really. Doesn’t history testify to the fact that the economic engine driving Branson is a cyclic tourism based engine? Are the majority of the jobs that are vital and necessary to drive and service that engine good paying “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal?” Isn’t the basic cycle the same today, as it has been for decades, people work during the “tourist season,” for relatively low wages, minimal or no benefits, and, when the season is over, collect unemployment during the off season?
Now hold on Seagull, there are lots of people making big money in Branson, and many more who have good paying “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal. True enough but how much of that “good money” and how many of those jobs are not dependent on Branson’s tourism driven economic engine? An economic engine fueled by the labors of those who do not have good paying “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal.”
Are there not seemingly daily reports of the increasing national trend of employers to “outsource” and otherwise take advantage of the cheaper labor outside of the United States? Is it any different in Missouri and particularly in southwest Missouri? In an Ole Seagulls opinion, that in conjunction with our areas topography, weather, and tourism based economy create an environment where the opportunities for good paying, “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal” will be few and far between.
Absent one of those “few and far between” opportunities “the Lord and the twelve apostles” could have walked into that meeting with ideas and ended up with the same result. Why? Because, according to the piece, “Rockaway citizens are still enamored with the idea of a casino, a bad fit for the Ozarks.”
And why shouldn’t they be “enamored?” Given the economic base and the job market in the Ozarks can anyone realistically name another idea that has near the same potential of providing good paying “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal” as that provided by casino entertainment in Rockaway Beach?
An added advantage with casino entertainment is that Branson doesn’t want it. Does anyone really think that if an opportunity presented itself that provided 500 to 1,000 good paying, “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal,” particularly one that could generate between 300,000 to 800,000 new tourists a year, that Branson, the economic “pac man” of our area, wouldn’t do everything in its power to “gobble it up.” Need one look any farther than the Branson TIF for Branson Hills to see what happens when Branson wants the same thing that its neighbors want?
It’s enough to cause an Ole Seagull to wonder if maybe the piece wasn’t right when it said, that “the idea of a casino” is “a bad fit for the Ozarks.” After all, a casino would provide good paying, “full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal.” Wouldn’t that be “a bad fit for the Ozarks” because it would increase the cost of the “fuel” that drives Branson’s economic engine?
But Seagull, does everything have to revolve around what Branson’ wants? With that type of rationale what hopes are there for good paying, full-time jobs with benefits that aren’t seasonal? To quote the old song, “The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind.” Just don’t be standing “downwind” when it blows in.
Gary Groman, a.k.a. “The Ole Seagull,” is an independent columnist and the editor of the Branson Courier. He may be reached by clicking here or by calling 417-339-4000.
