LETTER: Protect region's unique qualities

A recent 6,700 mile roadtrip to explore business/relocation areas out West brought us through Kalispell. Sixteen years ago I moved from Colorado to North Carolina, seeing wealthy outside influences then coming to Colorado to change that state internally to a place which those transplants left, forcing many locals to leave due to higher costs of living, increased taxes, and increased cost of goods and services and increased crime rates.

After seeing what has happened to my former state, and huge changes now occurring in North Carolina, and talking to many local area business people throughout the Flathead Valley and other areas we visited in bordering states, I have to say that you have a very special place to live within the Flathead Valley and you must preserve it!

Some who come there from other areas of the country with lots of financial ability behind them with their ideas to “make it better” will argue growth and change are inevitable everywhere. I will tell you, however, as a small business owner, that if you allow continued change and alteration of the thing that once made you unique to other regions of the country, and accept corporate/franchised businesses over private businesses, you surrender your identity and heritage as that community and people, and can never again be what you always used to be.

You effectively become like every other sanitized, over-commercialized, and overpopulated town across America with more rules and laws to further constrict your independence and movement and how you conduct private business.

Any person, regardless of who they are, should go to, and acclimate to, another area due to its inherent uniqueness and personality that attracted them there; NOT try to go somewhere else and change it to that place you left behind. Otherwise, you should never have moved in the first place. —Steve Lackovic, Hickory, N.C.