Unfortunately it’s an all too frequent item on the agenda for local government bodies recently, calling for discussions of budgets to adjust for declining revenues due to lower sales tax collections.

The slowdown in our area’s oil-based economy has meant a slowdown in business for most area retailers and lower sales means less sales taxes collected. That’s got public bodies like the school board, the sheriff’s office, city government and parish government looking to cut expenses, or see if they can find some revenues elsewhere to make up for the lower sales tax collections.

Less sales tax collected means less money for local schools, less for mosquito control efforts, less money for operations of local parks and recreation facilities, less money for plenty of efforts that most residents consider the meat and potatoes of what government should be doing.

There’s no magic wand that’s going to get waved and suddenly sales tax collections will be back at the level they were in recent years. Our local economy will recover, will grow again, but it’s going to take some time.

But there is one idea that can produce immediate benefit and that’s the old reminder to “Shop Local.”

Most everyone’s heard how when a dollar is spent locally, it turns over in the local economy at least seven times, in effect creating seven local dollars that get spent locally. So when you spend a dollar at business “A” the employees or owners of that business have a dollar they can spend at business “B,” and then the employees or owners of that business have a dollar they can spend at still another business and the process repeats.

When money gets spent outside of our community there is no seven-time rollover benefit and there is no sales tax collected at each of those rollover sales opportunities.

That’s why you see various reminders to Shop Local in many communities sponsored by area chambers of commerce, promoted in local newspapers, and elsewhere. This newspaper has a group of local businesses that sponsor a “Shop Iberia First” ad every month trying to remind locals of the benefits of doing business with local companies.

No one is saying there’s something wrong with shopping out of the community. No one suggests you blindly buy local even if the price is significantly more or the item you see is of less quality. But the idea of the Shop Local reminders is to try to get locals to give local businesses a fair shot at their business and preferably the first shot, before dealing with an out-of-town business or buying over the internet.

The whole community benefits from every dollar spent with a local business and local governments benefit from the sales taxes collected on those dollars.

Let’s all remember the benefits when we Shop Local first and do our part to help business and tax collections to improve in our community.

WILL CHAPMAN

PUBLISHER