This morning at the Alderwood Mall, Community Transit CEO Joyce Eleanor was joined by Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and business owners to kickoff the Buy Local for Transit program.
Flanked by the Santa display in the back and Made in Washington store on the side, it was a great beginning to what will hopefully be a long-term effort to convince our riders and all county residents to keep their shopping dollars local. That alone can help our local economy, and help Community Transit.
Reardon made the point that this decade Snohomish County has been one of the fastest growing local economies in the nation. We have attracted new industries, and our housing market remains higher than the national average. It will be great if residents now respond to this call to action with their wallets!
To answer a question from the last post on this issue, in 2007 Community Transit collected about $76.5 million from sales taxes; in 2010 we're on track to collect about $62 million. Our forecast for 2011 is not much better as we expect to bring in just under $63 million.
Will Buy Local for Transit make a difference? We can't predict that, but we're hopeful. And if we didn't try we would not be doing the best for our customers.
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Thanks for providing some figures, Martin. $13.5MM is a big gap--at a rate of .009, that is around $1.5B in sales!
ReplyDeleteFor that I would expect we need more shoppers coming back into Snohomish County, and buying big ticket items--cars and appliances and furniture and home improvement stuff. More like a "Buy Here" program rather than "Buy Local".
It won't make much difference, but why not consider turning some deadheading UW commute buses into reverse express commutes for UW students to get out to Alderwood Mall? At least CT would be bringing new shoppers into the County.