About BASC.

Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 1.15.

There’s a meeting this Thursday at high noon in the Post’s Living Room: the first meeting of the Business Association of South County. It’s somewhat appropriate that the meeting is being held at the Post; and not just because Jill is one of BASC’s promoters.

Y’know, it’s often said that a town isn’t a real town unless it has a newspaper; and though south Nevada County is not a proper town, it is a proper community, and as such should organize community-promoting things. We have concerned citizens groups, and now a newspaper. As this area grows—and, like it or hate it, growth is inevitable unless people stop producing children—it makes sense to create a local business association.

Okay, so I’m straining the Post’s policy against staff-generated opinion pieces by suggesting a business association may be a good idea. I’m not really; God forbid, it might even be a bad idea. I used to live in a town whose chamber of commerce had an unwritten mission to discourage business competition. The town had one of everything and didn’t want two. The idea was to keep the town small, but the result was that everyone shopped out of town. That could happen here. There are some local business owners I know who don’t want competition, but cover themselves by claiming they’re really in favor of "controlled growth." (We’ve got all types of people in our area, including hypocrites.)

So is it a good idea or a bad idea? Dunno. We’ll find out in the long run. Right now, I for one hope it does promote local business and improve the community. While the Post has no opinion, it is still a function of newspapers to improve their community, and to promote and publicize things that do likewise. Okay?

I tell you though, BASC would be a lot more fun to write about if they were called South County Association of Businesses. Put the acronym together and you’ll see what I mean.

—Kent Leslie, managing editor

Update, 10/20/2024: The point of a business association, chamber of commerce, business lobby, or whatever you wanna call it, is to promote business. The local one was the Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce, but the GVCC focused primarily on businesses within the city limits of Grass Valley, and overlooked the businesses in the huge unincorporated areas outside it. Sorta like The Union covered Grass Valley and Nevada City, but gave the unincorporated areas a miss—leaving the room wide open for a newspaper like Countryside Post.

Anyway Jill had seen the opportunity to start a newspaper for southern Nevada County; now she decided we also needed our own business association. She spoke with a few advertisers, and a few local wackjobs—whoops, I mean civic-minded folks—and called for a meeting. Since she owned the local newspaper, what better way to promote it?

As you can tell, I was in favor of the idea… provided it didn’t become a conspiracy, like I had seen in Dixon, of local businesses who wanted to drive out competitors. Sometimes this’ll happen: Some guy has a comfortable monopoly, and wants to maintain it. So I figured I’d preemptively tweak such people just a little. If BASC turned into an anti-growth business club, it’d’ve been evil, and you certainly don’t want to found something evil. (Well, I don’t.)

Didn’t take long before the businesses who joined BASC chose to change its name to the South Nevada County Chamber. Which rubbed the South Nevada County Concerned Citizens the wrong way—SNCC and SNCCC are mighty similar acronyms—but meh.