For the last two years my partners and I have been quietly doing a feasibility study on Fountain Hills to open our 25th location of our multi-million dollar company, which would have employed a minimum of 200 workers, preferably from Fountain Hills.

This would have been the ideal location for us. We spoke and listened to almost all of the retail owners in town, unbeknownst to them, big and small, old and new, and were shocked with the final results of our study.

*After watching the shopping patterns in town we noticed that almost 73 percent of shopping is done outside of Fountain Hills for all conceivable products.

*The business retention rate big/small is only 50 percent to comparable sized towns we have looked at.

*The over-regulation of businesses of all sizes right down to the ridiculous sign ordinances. We have never seen such a lack of support for local businesses, by a local government (i.e. Town Council, P&Z Commission, mayor etc.).

The people and government of this cute little town need to learn to support local before a multimillion dollar company like ours will consider opening here. Our tax base alone would have gotten the town debt free. Well onto the next study/town; too bad, we really had high hopes for Fountain Hills.