Editorial: City of San Marcos Partners With Outside Business For Blue Santa

Knowing the importance of keeping sales tax dollars local and building relationships while supporting local businesses, it amazed me that the City of San Marcos and the San Marcos Police Department has partnered with an out of town business

By, Melissa Jewett, Publisher

It’s that time of year again. Thanksgiving is only 10 days away, and Christmas is only 41 days away.

This time a year brings out the best in everyone, including the San Marcos Police Department’s Blue Santa and Hays County Sheriff’s Department Brown Santa Christmas fundraiser programs.

I have always found that if you are financially able to give this time of year, these are two great organizations to give to during the holidays and all year long.

This time of year also means municipalities, counties and even states receive the majority of their operating or general fund budgets from sales tax dollars.

One of the local programs to highlight local spending and businesses is the San Marcos Main Street Program, which holds their annual Small Business Saturday. It’s scheduled for November 28 (#SHOPSMALLSMTX).

For many cities, counties and state governments, the sales tax revenue that is collected during the last month or so of the year is a major portion of their yearly budgets. Most cities around the country seem to fight to keep their community spending locally.

In addition, the local dollars spent helps to support our local San Marcos businesses and is a vital part of any healthy local economy. It supports the relationships between the small business owners and their local governments.

Years ago while working for NBC-TV in a small town, our city and county fought constantly to keep the community from going to larger cities to buy their vehicles, furniture, appliances, clothes, jewelry and even find their doctors.

These larger cities were about three hours of driving time, and it was nothing for people to rent trailers to take with them to load up the furniture and appliances.

It was, at that time, a brilliant idea was born, Shop Elko First.

However, to pull off this major marketing event while making it successful for our local economy and small businesses, we needed a large sponsor, or rather a partner. But, in small towns, it’s easier to get a couple of smaller sponsors or partners to team up together.

Our team was able to get the only three auto dealers in town to sit at the same table and agree to join forces. It worked.

To this day, this program is still alive but has changed and grown over the years.

You are probably wondering why I went into a lengthy explanation of something that happened twenty years ago. Let me explain.

After years building the campaign, knowing the importance of keeping tax dollars local and building relationships while supporting local businesses, it amazed me that the City of San Marcos and the San Marcos Police Department has partnered with an out of town business for this year’s Blue Santa campaign.

As I said above, I believe that both the Blue and Brown Santa programs are a very worthy cause. And if every person who could afford to give a child a small gift, every San Marcos and Hays County child would have a blessed, heartwarming Christmas.

I would be very disappointed in our city officials if they did not approach our local business community for Blue Santa partnerships.

However, if the city did reach out and couldn’t find, not one business, in San Marcos to partner with for this annual event that gives to our local children, our city has more issues than most of us thought.

It is very important that every community member supports your local small businesses and  Shop San Marcos First as much as possible, whenever possible.

Please support the local businesses in your community….“Shop San Marcos First.”