Help your town by shopping local

Chronicle Staff

Published: Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it at least a dozen times. When you buy things in your local community, you keep the sales tax here and you help preserve what is left of your main street. If you want Custer stores to have more variety and  larger inventories, then help them do that with your support during this critical holiday shopping season. They would like nothing more than to offer you a better selection and more choices. But they can’t do that if they don’t earn enough money to plow it back into more store inventory. More importantly, they can’t grow their businesses and expand into other areas if you don’t give them your support in the first place. Doing business in a small community isn’t easy. You don’t know exactly what your customers will want to buy. Then there is the choice of how many to buy and in what sizes or colors. It’s a guessing game and you hope what you choose to buy will appeal to your customers as well. Look around your local stores first before you drive to the nearby big city to do your shopping. Chances are they have what you are looking for, and at a comparable price to the big box stores. If they don’t have exactly what you are looking for, they will be glad to order it for you. You don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to drive an hour and race around for early-riser specials, either. Pretty soon the after-Thanksgiving sales will start at a minute after midnight on Black Friday! Besides the convenience of shopping in your hometown, there is the fact that sales tax generated is used to maintain and improve your community. Don’t dare grumble about bumpy streets or alleys or untimely snow removal, or poorly maintained city parks if you never contribute to the local economy. Property taxes don’t fund all of these services on their own. Sales tax revenue is vitally important to all of our municipalities. Finally, our local businesses are expected to make a contribution to anyone who walks through the door or sends out a solicitation in the mail. We are glad to help out wherever we can. We can’t do this if we don’t make a big enough profit to have something left over for donations. This is a fact of life. If it isn’t there, we can’t give to the cause. Shop your local businesses to make sure they remain viable and profitable. Remember, it’s your town to help build up and make prosperous. As our esteemed Custer Area Chamber of Commerce executive director Dave Ressler always says, “Shop local and shop often!” The townf you wave may be your very own.  A Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families!