Shopping where you live

With just one week until Christmas local officials and business
owners are asking Windsor residents to consider spending their
season dollars with local merchants.
“Shopping locally is more important these days than at any time
in recent history,” said Gary Quackenbush, President and CEO,
Windsor Chamber of Commerce and Visitor’s Center. “It is not just
about convenience and saving gas – which are important. It’s about
keeping our hard earned dollars here in the local community while
saving jobs and preventing outsourcing.”
Local shopping is also a means of supporting the services
provided by the Town itself as sales tax is one of the Town’s most
important revenue sources. The money provided by sales tax is used
to support every aspect of Windsor’s administration from the police
department to Parks and Recreation.
While sales tax contributes to about 20 percent of the town’s
General Fund, assistant Town Manager Christa Johnson said the
ripple effect of local spending, including jobs and support for
non-profits, were as important to the town as sales tax.
“When you shop locally, you help create and sustain jobs,” she
said.
Johnson said many of the businesses receiving local dollars turn
that money into donations and support for groups such as the
Windsor High School Boosters, Boys & Girls Club or other local
non-profits that help build a sense of community.
According to the Sonoma County Go Local Cooperative, an alliance
of businesses, non-profits, individuals and governments that
promote local living, about 45 cents of each dollar spent at a
local business is reinvested in the community.
That money is returned to the community through wages, business
to business transactions and donations to community groups.
Craig Christensen, owner of the Powell’s Sweet Shoppe in
Downtown Windsor said local dollars were what kept him in business
and that as an owner of a Windsor business, he shopped in Windsor
to help create a stronger business community. “If we all shop here,
we’re all supporting each other,” he said.
Quackenbush said the inter-town trade helped create economic
diversity by drawing additional business to Windsor. “These factors
have an enormous impact on sustaining the viability of neighborhood
businesses as well as in helping to support a variety of additional
service providers, suppliers, contractors, area producers and
others that help to make the business community thrive and
prosper,” he said.
Christensen said he also enjoyed the sense of familiarity
provided by local shoppers. “It’s nice to know the faces and get to
know the customers,” he said. “It really provides a sense of
home.”
Quackenbush said shopping locally can be a more personalized and
intimate experience. “We all like doing business with those we
know, and who know us, our likes and dislikes. Local retailers
provide an atmosphere conducive to socializing. Over time we form
personal relationships and talk about things important to every
resident as well as to us, personally,” he said.