With the most important retail season just around the corner, merchants are hoping shoppers will think local first.
A story in Sundays Kansas City Star gave reason to worry that may not be the case.
Local sales tax receipts in the shoppers paradise of Overland Park, home to Oak Park Mall, are down 6% over the past year.
In Merriam, where car dealerships of every make and model abut either side of I-35, auto sales are down by 5%.
As a state, Kansass sales tax collections are down only a quarter of a percent, but, according to the report, that bucks a nationwide trend of 3% gains.
In the Kansas City region, those drops in retail sales are enough to spur city managers to rethink their budgets.
Compounding their pain is what the cities owe for receiving STAR bonds, the state tax incentive program to lure new developers and to be paid through the anticipated sales tax revenues of the new shopping malls, racetracks and other attractions.
Seven years down the road, and Overland Park has done little to pay down a $65 million STAR loan for its Prairie Fire shopping center and has been forced to use its sales tax revenues from other sources to help pay down its service debt.
Critics say the STAR bonds are doled out too gratuitously and with little justification they will draw newcomers to the area.
LOCALLY, Allen County has witnessed a jump in sales tax collections, most likely from the influx of workers hired to build the Prairie Queen wind farm.
County collections from January to July are up almost 19% over last year $1.3 million to almost $1.6 million. For Iola, sales tax receipts are up by 6.2% for the year, from about $742,000 to $788,000. And Moran, home of the wind farm, saw a whopping 87% increase in sales tax receipts.
Overall, our neck of the woods remains steady, retail-wise. Humboldts sales tax receipts for 2018 were down only a shade more than 1% and Chanutes are up by 0.4%.
Sales in Fort Scott, on the other hand, are down 5.6%, perhaps because of the news its hospital was closing, proving the ripple effect of bad news.
We know any uptick in sales can never be taken for granted, and turning it into long-term growth is a formidable challenge. As never before, the message we need to be sending is for shoppers to be intentional about where they spend their dollars. It matters.
