Jackson's historic Main Street currently has 18 empty shop windows. The new Jackson City Council and the new Jackson Revitalization Committee will face many of challenges come January.

Photo by: Scott Thomas Anderson

Struggling merchants, deep political feuds and a sense of overall decline will fall into the laps of a new Jackson City Council in January.

A year ago, residents from Main Street to South Jackson seemed reluctant to acknowledge the growing number of empty storefronts, vacating businesses and dwindling tourism dollars.

Today, with the American financial system descending into chaos, attitudes in Jackson have shifted. Most community leaders and business people agree the city is teetering on the edge of an economic black hole.

Yet, even as a fresh push for revitalization gains steam, questions linger over whether competing interests and bruised personal feelings will stand in the way of altering the city's fortunes.

Main Street microcosm

When regional television news began airing stories about the struggles of Jackson's Main Street last November - broadcasting images of taped-up windows and "for rent" signs across the entire Central Valley - a number of business owners decided it was time to take inventory on what was going wrong.

One glaring development was that the tour busses that had formerly ushered in a steady stream of paying customers had all but disappeared. Merchants who called the tour bus companies were told that busses were being ticketed too much and that clients were complaining that there were no places to eat on Main Street.

Another blow to downtown foot traffic came when the Amador County Board of Supervisors moved the county courthouse away from Main Street to the top of Argonaut Lane. Suddenly the attorneys, court workers and related courthouse visitors who had once patronized Main Street businesses throughout the week were nowhere to be found.

New retail competition from the Martell Business Park also hurt merchants by increasing the presence of retail chains that could underprice locally owned businesses. Even Main Street's top selling point, its charm and ambiance as a historic Gold Rush destination, was being challenged by other historic Main Streets along Highway 49 - some with elaborate architectural and design guidelines that Jackson lacked.

While numerous members of the Historic Jackson Business Association were complaining about the "ragged look" of Main Street, they were also beginning to express concerns about problematic loitering in front of its bars.

Several merchants told the Ledger Dispatch that patrons from the Wells Fargo Club and the Main Event were often blocking the sidewalks in the middle of the afternoon, refusing to move for passers-by and behaving in generally "intimidating ways" that made shoppers not want to be on Main Street. They added that the National Hotel, with its smoke-filled front porch is above the street, frequently had customers "cat-calling" to mothers walking their children to karate lessons.

Yet even with downtown appearing to be a tough sell to local and regional consumers, the HJBA and other community activists were not ready to give up on restoring Main Street's former glory. The group, along with its supporters and the Jackson City Council all began the yearlong process of forming the Jackson Revitalization Committee, which would be an organized force to address Main Street's problems and giving it a competitive, sustainable vision for the future.

During the year the JRC was being formed, the U.S. economy began to tank. On Wednesday morning at the HJBA meeting, HJBA and JRC member Stan Lukowicz urged his fellow merchants to not lose heart during the times ahead.

"I know no one wants to hear this, but I think things are going to get worse for another two years," he said. "My renters on Main Street are having trouble just surviving right now. But things will eventually get better. We all have to pull together and look out for one another in the meantime. Taking care of each other is good business."

HJBA member Rhonda Hendricks agreed. "I think we're about as low as we can get right now," she said, "but I also know Jackson is resilient, and it will eventually be back and stronger than it ever was before."

Tensions with the outside

The Jackson Revitalization Committee, an evolution of the city's economic development committee, was formed with the purpose of not only helping Main Street, but the entire city. The empty storefronts confined to downtown have now spread through South Jackson and the rest of its shopping centers. Also noticeable is that the lush, flowing creek that once carried ducks, fish and occasionally otters through the city's parks and along its scenic highway has run dry, it's said, due to a new pipeline and lingering drought conditions.

"I used to have a beautiful creek in my back yard," a Pitt Street resident announced at Tuesday's city council meeting. "Little children used to feed the ducks and look at the fish. Now all we have are puddles full of mosquitoes. I'd like to know what the (Amador Water Agency) gave the city of Jackson for draining its creeks?"

When City Manager Mike Daly responded that there had been no compensation from the agency, the woman added, "Well, it's a shame we won't get to pass that treasure onto our children," to which she received rousing applause from the audience.

The Jackson City Council has had an increasingly contentious relationship with the water agency in recent months. During the Sept. 22 council meeting, City Planner Susan Peters made the case that the AWA was attempting to grab the rights to sell water to the Wicklow Way development when, according to her, the city of Jackson owned those rights. The council has also recently clashed with the AWA on other issues, forming a sewer rates committee to examine increased water rates.

Tensions between certain city council members and the board of supervisors also appeared to boil to the surface when it was time to finalize the board members for the Jackson Revitalization Committee. Pointing to Jackson's decrease in sales tax revenue over the relocation of Safeway, Prospect Motors and other businesses to the Martell Business Park, then-Councilman Andy Rodriguez led three of his colleagues in blocking District 1 supervisor-elect John Plasse from being appointed to the JRC .

"Now that John's a supervisor, I think there's a conflict between us and the county," he said. "The supervisors did something in Martell that was good for them, and we took the hit. Do I have to sit here and name all of the businesses we lost? It's fine for them to look out for themselves, but we have to do the same."

Rodriguez's comments about the board of supervisors occurred less than a week after supervisors had been forced to publicly defend themselves for giving more excess sales tax revenue to Jackson than they were technically required to give. Under the county's revenue sharing deal, the board could have kept two-thirds of the excess revenues generated from auto malls that had been relocated to Martell. Instead, they offered to split the moneys in half with Jackson because, as outgoing District 1 Supervisor Rich Escamilla said, the beleaguered city needed it.

Turmoil within?

Councilman Wayne Garibaldi looked like he was on an island during the evening of the controversial Plasse vote. The lone dissenting voice, he argued that the residents of Jackson deserved to have their new supervisor directly involved in the mission of breathing new life into the city.

"I think John is exactly the kind of person who belongs on the committee," he argued. "His motivations are pure and he wants to see the county and council have mutual goals."

When Garibaldi found himself on the losing end of the 4-1 vote, he slumped back in his seat and slightly threw his hands up. However, at the next council meeting, with Rodriguez having resigned, Mayor Rosalie Pryor Escamilla absent and public support in favor of Plasse, Garibaldi found himself with all the political capital.

In the two weeks since the council had blocked Plasse from being on the revitalization committee, the new 11-member JRC board had themselves rebelled against the unpopular decision. This paved the way for Garibaldi to successfully lead a motion to get Plasse appointed. "Every single member of the JRC wants him on board," he calmly told council members Connie Gonsalves and Al Nunes, both of whom had voted against Plasse. "In fact, many of the members are adamant about this."

What Garibaldi tactfully left out was the level of outcry from voters over the Plasse snub. Ironically, even as the other four council members were claiming - despite two legal opinions that said the opposite - that Plasse had a conflict of interest, members of the council began to face the same accusation. Critics argued that the original Plasse vote was fueled more by bruised egos and a desire for payback over the July election than anything else. Pryor Escamilla had run directly against Plasse to be supervisor of District 1, while Gonsalves's husband, John, had also challenged for the seat. Both were soundly beaten. Rodriguez's wife, Terri Works, had devoted both time and money to Pryor Escamilla's campaign.

During Tuesday's council meeting, Gonsalves continued to insist that Plasse had a conflict of interest, though she cited no examples. Some members of the audience weren't buying it.

"It is clear her problem is with Plasse," resident Thornton Consolo, who'd been watching from the second row, said in a posting on the Ledger Dispatch's Web site the next morning. "She and her husband spent a lot of money to get her husband elected to Plasse's position. Plasse then thrashed Rosalie and Gonsalves at the polls. This is more sour grapes ..."

Nunes stood by Gonsalves in maintaining that Plasse had a conflict of interest. Despite holding their positions, both reversed their votes by going along with Garibaldi's motion to appoint Plasse the 12th member of the revitalization committee.