Community support keeps the town running

Right off the bat I want to most graciously say thank you to all the wonderful people that were involved in getting both of the Benefits for the Tracy’s off the ground and so very, very successful. I have enough room in this letter to state each name I know of who has helped in every way, large or small, but I am too afraid of leaving someone out and hurting someone’s feelings. Records were kept up to minute of these benefits, but when more and more donations and money kept pouring in to me, Peggy, Dawnell and delivered to the Club, my mentality went from being an OCD person on organizing to a “duh” person who couldn’t keep up with the many, many items showing up on the tables with many people trying to tell who they were, what the donation was and finishing off with a great story or a reminiscing about either Bob or Sandy. I hope I was able to follow the person’s story as I wrote the description down with out having to decipher it the next hour. As crazy as it gets, I, along with Dawnell and Peggy got most of the items located and set out.

Now you might want to know why I am writing this Letter to the Editor, instead of posting a special thank you to everyone who donated items, money, their time? Mainly, I want to first say something to our local businesses who so graciously donated items from their inventory – free! Yes, you did read that right, free! This means they are losing a piece of inventory from their back room without making a dime on it. No, you say? You are right they do get to take the donated item as a write-off on their year-end income tax. Doing this very often, as so many of our stores do, they lose income, which helps pay their bills and employees’ income. What a great thing our town businesses do, but do you know how we can repay their generosity?

No, you say? Here’s a thought, shop locally for items you can get here in town, and be grateful we still can. Without everyone supporting our merchants they will pack up, leave and force, yes force, us to drive 50-70 miles for our milk and bread.

I know I’m just as bad. When I can’t find an item I am in search of here in town, I head either west to Moses Lake or east into Spokane. I really don’t feel too bad for this because I went looking for a certain part here in town first and when I couldn’t find it, I had to go out of town to find it. Sure, if I’m near a store that has other items I need, I will go to that store and get it. It’s common sense, buy where it’s the closest.

What I’m trying to say is this: buy locally whenever you can. Prices in town might be higher, but the cost of fuel nowadays really doesn’t make it logical. If we don’t continue to buy locally, our stores are going to continue to close up and more people will leave town.

Say we lose Harvest Foods, for an example… do you want to have to buy your milk and bread from a convenience store? Don’t get me wrong, I like having a place where I can run to when I forgot to buy milk before 9 p.m. so I head to the Chevron, or Texaco, or Jakes, etc. How would you like those places to be the only place to purchase food?

After working retail and accounting at John Deere, I can understand the reasoning behind pricing in different stores that sell the same items. No. 1 - Quantity is a huge issue that keeps their inventory in control. You see, Wal-Mart can order 500 gallons of milk at their cost of .75 cents a gallon because of quantity. Whereas, Harvest Foods can’t order that many, obviously no storage space, plus their turnover of the milk isn’t as great. Our purchase price is close to triple their amount because of quantity. We don’t have enough people in town that use that much milk, thus the store, in order to stay in business, needs to charge more for that same gallon of milk.

You see it’s all about a survival game. I have goods to buy in ML, which is 47 miles to the west from a large store and 65 miles to the east from another store. Here again, both those stores have a huge inventory so they can sell their milk at a significantly lower price. I know I have zeroed in on using Harvest Foods as an example, but each and every store in Ritzville works off the same scenario. Another factor that many of you don’t think about is the freight charge getting the stores’ products to Ritzville. I have shook my head many times when I find out a truck had to pass Ritzville on the freeway and go to Spokane to pick up supplies from a warehouse that our local stores need then turn around and deliver them to us. Fuel and freight has a pretty high price today, again tacking more costs onto our local stores bottom line.

Sometimes we don’t seem to have a choice of heading to ML or Spokane, the product we need just isn’t in town. Okay, this can’t be helped we all realize, but when we can buy locally, thank the owner for being there ready to find a way to get you what you want. They will work with you most of the time. “All ya gotta do is ask.”

I guess my main point with this letter was to thank all and everyone for helping, donating, cooking, cleaning, decorating and serving for Bob and Sandy Tracy’s benefit, and to ask everyone to please try to support our local businesses. It’s their livelihood and without their businesses they wouldn’t have workers to pay, with/out workers being paid, they wouldn’t have money to support their families, and without families our homes begin to be vacant. It’s a circle of life for our town, with support from our town’s businesses, we need to support their livelihood so workers can continue to get paid and businesses continue to grow so more workers are needed. See the scenario there?

I am truly proud to be a part of this town. From what I’ve seen, everyone wants to strive for the same outcome – support our town, so we can support our families! Thank you for listening, now get out there and shop!

Sharon Oestreich, Ritzville