By Veronica Fisher
It”s perfectly fine to be selfish, as in take care of yourself. Sadly, folks who appear selfish often fail at actually taking care of themselves. In those cases, I wish they would be more selfish. I find myself thinking that I wish you cared about yourself as much as I care about you ? and on occasion, verbalizing it. The reader might assume that I am referring to an individual in an intimate relationship, but actually, I run into many people in the course of doing business that I wish for them to receive more fruitfully.
Healthy selfishness sees into the future. It”s so sad when someone wins a sudden flash of money and it”s gone in 60 seconds. Like a dieter crazed on an eating binge ? windfalls seem to eat them up. The sudden gain in gift or funds not only doesn”t last but the giftee ends up worse off than before and further in debt after the spending spree. That”s not selfish. That”s painful.
Healthy selfishness is ever expanding. Where does the self begin and end? Does the self end with your skin? What about your environment? When your home is well cared for, have you not then taken care of yourself? And does that, in turn, stop at your doorstep? What about the area you cross on the way to your front door? If your neighbor plants flowers in the yard, are you not touched by them? How far can you extend your sense of “taking care of self?” There”s “me and mine”? yeah, and when is it not you and yours?
That”s why win-win is the only real way to play the game. It”s bad business to hurt your customers! It”s bad business to lose sight of the long-term by pursuing today”s immediate profit. It is better to make a little money on a continuous basis from a lot of satisfied customers. Expressing false selfishness by taxing or charging harshly and unrealistically destroys the host. The relationship becomes parasitic, not symbiotic.
So now I would like to examine what the county is doing. Ouch! They want to collect the transient occupancy tax at all costs! Even if that means putting folks out of business. If someone has been able to be in business for five to 45 years they must have found a niche, a need in our community and they are satisfying that need. The need doesn”t go away even if politicians would like them to.
So who gets hurt? Everyone. It”s a lose-lose proposition.
Understandably, the county wants more tax dollars and if they chased the low-income tenants out of these small motels, presumably they will get more tax dollars from vacationers. They can”t charge the motel tax on long-term tenants. We can”t just flush these people out of existence. The tenants are hurt by this act and folks who have been relying on a reasonable income over the course of time, by meeting the needs of affordable housing, will lose their livelihood.
A change from offering affordable housing in combination with occasional transient occupancy (under 30 days) to “Throw everybody out and only rent to transients” and now depend on that trickle of income to survive financially will be the doom of many small businesses. In the short term, maybe the county will see a few more tax dollars in their coffer, but in the long term, we will go under and the flow of tax dollars from these businesses, doomed to failure, stops every bit as much as property taxes stop when there is a foreclosure.
The county did a big oops. I imagine it might be hard to back out of this one and save face. But they need to back out or else we all lose. Again, in doing business I say I wish they cared about themselves as much as I do.
Veronica Fisher
Lakeport
