Peoria Illinoisan

A little national exposure certainly can’t hurt East Peoria’s cause. The article comes complete with a picture of the famous “Greetings From Peoria” postcard. You have to be a subscriber to the magazine to read the web-site, so I’ve copied and pasted the text here. From the Dec. 19 issue of BusinessWeek: BIG BOX BLUES Making Few Friends On Main Street Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) has been on a charm offensive lately, trying to polish its image. The effort isn’t playing in Peoria, however. In that quintessential American town, the buzz is all about the retailer’s penny-pinching. Wal-Mart made front-page news in November by trying to cut its property taxes in East Peoria. Lured by a five-year tax holiday, the $288.2 billion company built a superstore in 1998 on what had been a vacant 19-acre lot. When the break expired, local authorities sent Wal-Mart a tax bill for $304,000 a year, mostly for local schools. Claiming its store’s value has been overassessed, Wal-Mart is asking an Illinois appeals board to drop its levy by a third. A Wal-Mart official said the appeal is no different than a homeowner challenging a rising property tax bill. Harrumphed the Peoria Journal Star in an editorial: “The audacity of the world’s largest company is breathtaking.” The tax flap comes only months after L.R. Nelson, a Peoria company that makes garden sprinklers, fired 100 full-time employees and sent their work to China. President Dave Eglinton says Wal-Mart wanted lower prices, and after Nelson lost its business with Home Depot (HD) to Chinese imports, the company couldn’t risk a cutback by its biggest customer, too. By Michael Arndt

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