Just look at Life Savers.
Life Savers, made for 35 years in Holland, Mich., was purchased by Kraft in December of 2000. After assurances that Kraft would stay in town, production was shipped to Canada by January of 2002. Holland officials worked with Kraft to help cut costs, namely by offering a $200,000-per-year reduction in electric costs, and providing a new source for sugar (saving about $1.8 million).
Yet Kraft still left, and Holland is without its number-one corporate friend.
Corporate America can't make assurances. They can't promise anything. Executives at corporations want to do one thing: make money. They don't care about the impact on a community - they care about the bottom line. Hey, that's America, and they have the right.
But the Hershey Trust is not a corporation. It's a trust. It's here to provide. Its members certainly should not be looking at the bottom line, but should be looking at the moral thing to do. What will continue the intentions of its founder, Milton Hershey?
I can't for the life of me figure out why the Derry Township School Board hasn't done what just about every other governing board has - come out officially against the sale. Instead, board president Mark Mooney read a written statement, which included "Hershey Trust representatives have publicly provided assurances in recent weeks that, as current and future community members themselves, they will take community impact into consideration as their process moves forward. We hope those assurances will be fulfilled."
And I hope to win a million dollars some day.
Does taking an official stance on the debate help stop the sale? No, not at all. But, at the very least, it strengthens the show of unity.
The Derry Township School District can potentially lose out a lot here. While our attempts to find a straight answer as to how much Hershey Foods Corp. pays in school taxes have been unsuccessful, I'd bet that it's considerable.
The last thing I'd be doing is betting on some assurances and some wishful thinking. The Derry Township School Board needs to act.
Just a little side-note: According to Reuters' story about the Orphan's Court trial, one of the Trust's witnesses was George Stephenson, managing director of UBS Warburg, the bank in charge of the sale. Stephenson testified that any injunction could threaten the deal. But then he said he spoke as an "independent witness," even though his bank would earn millions of dollars if the sale went through.
Last time I checked, 2+2 still equals 4.
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