My familiar store at Walden Galleria will be leaving me soon - the place where I shop weekly to pick up our family's groceries. I may be selfish, but others have also expressed the same feeling, that this corporate move is unfair and unkind. We have found a comfort level, a place where we like to meet, chat a bit, and ultimately, bring home the stuff that sustains us.

I'm talking about Wegmans, the Rochester based food chain that has established a nice foothold in our area. A decision was made to close this store, and it will happen sometime in October.

I remember personally meeting with Robert Wegman, the founder and owner, in 1991 to discuss a very important issue that would impact his business, item pricing. What was unusual about the meeting was the fact that my wife had called me earlier in the afternoon and told me she was called into work early and could not pick up our children from school. Rather than complicate my meeting with Robert Wegman, I decided to call his office and see if we could meet at my home instead. It would be a lot easier to have him meet me at home instead of me having to lug three children to his office.

He agreed, and it was borderline awesome to see this high level, successful businessman come to our humble abode with his entourage in a white Lincoln Continental. Our meeting was far from high brow though; it was friendly, pleasant and family-like. Ultimately, the issue that concerned the food industry was able to be looked at with different eyes because of dialogues like this. The County Legislature no longer pressed for item pricing, but strove for a more business friendly, scanner accuracy law.

Often I hear that government should run more like a business. But, the bottom line in government is a lot different than the bottom line in business. Our sense of profit is different. While business makes most of its decision based on money, government makes most of its decisions based on heart.

So, all I'm saying here is quite simple. Even though Wegmans is closing its Galleria store, and the nearest store is a mere two miles away, I couldn't easily make that decision as your government official to close that particular service down. My bottom line would have to include such things as: who's no longer going to get this service, and how much inconvenience will it be to my constituents if I chose to move the service a mere two miles down the road. I miss Robert Wegman; I would've liked to meet him in his corporate office, to discuss this issue.

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