Editors’ Note: Excerpted from The Washington Post, November 22, 2019. Baldwin FL voted 68% for Trump. Quoth the President, “Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country.” [State of the Union address, February 2019.] Real life circumstances often tend to eradicate the hard edge of ideological argument. Baldwin FL is an example.
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BALDWIN, Fla. — When Sean Lynch ran for mayor, he never anticipated that the job would involve hiring a butcher and tracking the sale of collard greens.For many of Baldwin’s roughly 1,600 residents, though, traveling for food wasn’t really a choice. The town’s median household income of $44,271 is well below the state average, and it’s not uncommon for families to juggle their schedules around sharing one car. Senior citizens also make up a significant percentage of the population, and many no longer drive.
What if the town opened its own grocery store?
So Lynch came to his colleagues with a proposal: What if the town opened its own grocery store?
Abandoned by mainstream supermarkets whose business models don’t have room for low profit margins, both urban and rural communities nationwide have turned to resident-owned co-ops or nonprofits to fill the gap. But Baldwin is trying something different. At the Baldwin Market, which opened its doors on Sept. 20, all of the employees are on the municipal payroll, from the butcher to the cashiers. Workers from the town’s maintenance department take breaks from cutting grass to help unload deliveries, and residents flag down the mayor when they want to request a specific type of milk.
Many small-town grocers are reaching retirement age, and it’s tough for communities with dwindling populations to attract new residents when there’s no supermarket nearby. Consequently, food access becomes almost like a utility that you have to have for the town to exist. Notably, experiments in communal ownership are taking place in deep-red parts of the country where the word “socialism” is anathema. “You expect to hear about this in a place like the People’s Republic of Massachusetts,” jokes Brian Lang, the director of the National Campaign for Healthy Food Access at The Food Trust.
In many rural, conservative communities struggling to hang on to their remaining residents, ideological arguments about the role of government tend to be cast aside as grocery stores shutter because of population decline and competition from superstores.
But in many rural, conservative communities struggling to hang on to their remaining residents, ideological arguments about the role of government tend to be cast aside as grocery stores shutter because of population decline and competition from superstores.
Fundamentally, people that have lived in these rural communities all their lives want these rural communities to survive. And they realize that without access to food, they’re not going to survive.
By definition, a collectively owned, government-run enterprise like the Baldwin Market is inherently socialist. But Lynch, who has a nonpartisan position but governs a town where 68 percent of residents voted for Donald Trump in 2016, doesn’t see it that way.
From his point of view, the town is just doing what it’s supposed to do: providing services to residents who already pay enough in taxes. “We take the water out of the ground, and we pump it to your house and charge you,” he told The Post. “So what’s the difference with a grocery store?”
The town tried in vain to find another tenant, but the 10,000-square-foot store was too small for a Winn-Dixie or Walmart, and too big for mom-and-pop grocers. Raising property taxes was a non-starter, which meant that so, too, was luring retailers with generous incentives.
Lynch, a retired Navy veteran who grew up in New York, moved to Baldwin with his family in the 1980s when he was stationed in Jacksonville. They decided to stay for the strong public schools and small-town feel, and, after getting out of the service, Lynch went into the restaurant business. Already familiar with drawing up business plans and negotiating with suppliers, he didn’t find it too much of a stretch to do the same for the shuttered grocery store when it closed last year.
Over the summer, after holding several workshops, the town council approved a $150,000 loan from a reserve fund to get the Baldwin Market up and running. There wasn’t much hesitation about getting into the grocery business, Lynch says, since just about everyone was frustrated with the lack of options. The IGA’s former manager gladly took her old job back and resumed her duties as though nothing had changed.
So far, though, the experiment has been a success. The town council had hoped to take in $3,500 a day, and sales have routinely exceeded that, Lynch says. About 1,600 people — roughly the equivalent of the town’s population — stopped in during opening weekend, according to the Florida Times-Union, and the market sold out of meat. Eight employees, all Baldwin residents, were hired at the outset, but the town recently brought on two more people to help out during the busy holiday season.
Baldwin is surrounded by farm country, and in late October, local green beans, tomatoes, peanuts, cabbage and milk filled the shelves. Lynch tries to buy directly from local farmers and is working with a fisherman from nearby Fernandina Beach to stock the store with fresh shrimp. Cashiers pass customer requests to the manager, though some residents go directly to the mayor to ask for Lactaid or keto-friendly snacks.
“As long as it’s cost-effective, we’ll put it in,” Lynch said. “Everyone knows it’s their store.”
The Baldwin Market has made life more convenient for people who previously drove into Jacksonville to buy groceries. But the bigger question is whether it can also meet its goal of providing healthier options for cash-strapped residents who relied on McDonald’s and Dollar General.
The town-run market also can’t compete with retail giants like Walmart, which Lynch acknowledges can lead to higher-than-average prices, such as $3.99 for a gallon of reduced-fat milk or $1.99 for a 16-ounce Diet Coke. Some residents have taken to the Internet to voice concerns about whether the low-income and elderly people the Baldwin Market is intended to help can afford to shop there.
“Should [local governments] be in private enterprise all the time?” he mused. “Maybe not. But for situations like this, yeah, definitely I believe they should.”
“Should [local governments] be in private enterprise all the time?” he mused. “Maybe not. But for situations like this, yeah, definitely I believe they should.”
What’s promising, he and others agree, is that communities struggling to draw a grocery store have another alternative they can consider. Matt Bruenig, the founder of the People’s Policy Project, a socialist think tank, likens it to having a “public option” for health care.
“The idea that a municipality should have to beg private companies to provide basic goods and services to its people is absurd,” he said. “And being able to say ‘we will just do it ourselves’ is very powerful.”
See previous VoxFairfax articles: https://voxfairfax.com/2019/05/12/can-we-please-relax-about-socialism/; https://voxfairfax.com/2018/10/14/socialism-is-all-around-us/; https://voxfairfax.com/2019/02/17/other-voices-socialist-bogeymen/; and https://voxfairfax.com/2018/09/02/thought-for-the-day-7/.
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