Keep it Local

Nov. 23, 2005

Recently, a group of local idealists issued a new currency for Northern Michigan called Bay Bucks. You have to be a participating business to accept Bay Bucks, but the washable currency printed on plastic is a completely legit form of legal tender. Essentially, the bills are similar to gift certificates or phone cards circulating between a network of merchants and restaurants.
The Bucks are issued by the Traverse Area Community Currency Corporation (TACCC) as the culmination of four years of research and planning. Natasha Lapinski, president of the TACCC, reports that nearly $100,000 in Bay Bucks have been issued in various denominations totalling more than 23,000 bills. The local TBA Credit Union serves as the “Fort Knox” for the resposity of Bay Bucks, and at last count, there were more than 75 Northern Michigan businesses and individuals participating.
But why would anyone want to shop with Bay Bucks instead of U.S. greenbacks?
The idea is to keep it local – to keep your dollars circulating among local merchants, rather than flying off to corporate headquarters in Iowa, Chicago or wherever.
Keeping your dollars local is small-scale economics applied to your community. If you purchase a gift at a small, independent candle shop, for instance, you benefit not only the local shopowners, but also the local candlemakers they buy their stock from and local beekeepers who supply the wax.
By contrast, if you purchase the same candle at a “big box” store, you may be providing a neighbor with a job – often one that comes with low pay and benefits – but the working value of your money slips over the horizon. Buy that gift from a website and even the benefit of helping to provide a local job or your town’s tax base disappears.
By one estimate, keeping a dollar in local circulation can benefit a community as much as 30 times over – providing jobs, building local businesses, improving schools and roads, providing police, fire and court services along with water, sewers and snow removal.
And that’s not all: when a community is prosperous, its citizens contribute to the arts and local conservation. They get behind bike paths, plays, art exhibits, bayfront improvements, parks, trails and festivals that beat at the heart of small town life. All because their dollars keep recycling back into the community.
Unfortunately, there are serious threats to that culture of community. Consider online shopping: One study claims that e-commerce is expected to surge by 25% this year, generating more than $18 billion for faraway website merchants who contribute nothing to the purchaser’s hometown. Taking it on the chin are local music stores, clothiers, CD shops, specialty boutiques and many other businesses that contribute to the charm of a community.
Consider the example of that small, independent candle shop on Main Street in any town in Northern Michigan. If a row of such shops disappear, a cascade of jobs evaporate as well, along with rents and the local tax base. A ripple effect spreads through the local economy that soon makes itself known in the quality of the town’s schools and law enforcement. We’ve all seen such towns, drained of their lifesblood, with colossal corporate chain stores perched on a sidewalk-free highway outside the city limits, like vultures on a corpse.
How’s that for some holiday spirit?
The point is, one can question the wisdom of Bay Bucks as a currency in Northern Michigan, but there’s no doubt that the backers’ hearts and minds are in the right place when it comes to protecting and preserving our community.
And as shoppers we can vote with our dollars in the same spirit by favoring local merchants whenever possible. Keep it local – keep your community strong into the
New Year.

For more information on Bay Bucks, see www.baybucks.org