City looks to Support Local Businesses by Shopping Local
Local businesses would like the city to show more support for them by updating its local vendor preference policy.
The policy gives businesses a credit when doing local bids with the city. For example, the current policy gives businesses a $40 credit on a bid of up to $2,000.
Communigraphics Owner Tracy Hooks said it just makes sense to shop locally when possible. She said business license fees are based on sales so the more sales the more the city makes.
“I don’t think they can make it high enough,” she said of the policy. “I just don’t think the city can do enough to support the small-business person and we do support the city.”
She said she understands that the city can’t always go with a local bidder on a purchase for financial reasons.
Brian Tucker, the president of the Greater North Augusta Chamber of Commerce, recently asked city council to consider updating the policy. Officials say they expect to begin voting on a new policy this month.
In December of 2008 when Tucker began as president of the chamber he said within a week local businesses were asking him to take a look at changing the policy that was adopted in 1992.
“I have been working behind the scenes doing my homework,” ever since, he said.
Tucker said just because a business is local doesn’t mean it can always handle the work.
“Projects can be specialized and large in scale and you can’t always use hometown businesses,” he said.
He said the city has tried to look at the direct cost on the city of using the credit system for local bids, but that figure is hard to determine. Tucker said more importantly is what the city gains when companies go to pay their business license fees.
If a local company wins a bid on a large project, Tucker said, that could mean more employees and another employed North Augusta resident who pays property or sales taxes.
“There is a huge ripple effect,” by doing business locally, he said. “Statistics say for every $1 spent with a local business you get $5-$15 worth of value out of that one dollar.”
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