About the Shop Smart. Shop Local. Program

Why is shopping local important?

When you spend $1 in the local economy, you also pay 8.25 cents in sales tax. Of that money, two pennies stay here locally to help keep your property taxes low, fund economic development and jobs, and it pays for the services you enjoy from the city.

The city of Amarillo depends on several sources of revenue to operate. The largest amount of income comes from two areas: sales tax and property taxes. Both of these revenue sources need a healthy local economy.

That money helps pay for services you depend on, like fire and police protection, parks and recreation, paved roads, and water and sewer service.

Money spent locally helps pay the salaries for Amarillo citizens. Money spent outside of the region leaves forever and doesn’t help our local economy.

Economic experts say that a dollar spent in our community will turn over anywhere from five to seven times. But buying goods outside the region or on the Internet means we lose economic power and tax dollars to other communities.

So what happens when you spend money outside of Amarillo and the Panhandle?

That money and the taxes and economic benefit it provides would be gone. And that would mean fewer services. For example, if everyone in Amarillo made just 1 percent of taxable purchases outside the city, it could cost Amarillo 6 police officers.*

So what are we doing about this?

Shop Smart. Shop Local. is a yearlong program designed to educate everyone about the importance of shopping locally and to help spur local economic activity.

Kickoff

The event kicked off May 4th, 2010 at the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce Business Connection.

Coupon Book

Kickstart Coupon Books are now available for $5 with hundreds of dollars worth of savings from 34 local merchants. Click here to see a list of participating businesses and locations selling the booklets.

Auto Days

Register at participating auto dealers for an opportunity to win an extra $1,000 if you purchase a car locally or $500 just for visiting a local dealer.

Panhandle Tour

Amarillo and the surrounding communities depend on each other greatly. Shop Smart Shop Local partners and local leaders will be visiting these communities later this year to show their support and say thank you.

Roundtable Discussion

Find out what local businesses and organizations are doing to help keep more money in the local economy and how it benefits us at a special roundtable discussion by key community leaders later this year.

Retail Days

There are many advantages to doing business locally. Find out why supporting businesses in our community makes good sense and how your pocketbook and our city can benefit when you shop locally.

Daily Gift Card Giveaway

Register at AmarilloShopSmart.com for your chance to win a $100 gift card that will be given out every day of the program. That’s more than $36,000 in gift cards to businesses in our community who are supporting the Shop Smart Shop Local program.

Support Local Business

Look for our logo in the windows of participating businesses and organizations that are supporting this program. They care about ?our community!

Tourism and the Arts

Look for special opportunities to learn more about tourism, hospitality and the arts and how important they are to the community and our economy. For example, the hotel occupancy tax generates $14 million each year to promote tourism, recruit conventions and pay for Civic Center operations and improvements.

* Source: City of Amarillo. Average salary and benefits of a polic officer is about $72,000 annually.