According to the Sioux Falls City Finance Director in the informational meeting yesterday, Councilor Brown, and the State Economic Advisor the larger cities in South Dakota are seeing a decrease in retail tax revenue and the smaller towns are seeing an increase. They seem to be puzzled why this is. Brown seemed to think it was the rural economy doing well.
I’m gonna guess he is wrong.
I’m not an economist, and trust me, I haven’t really done much research on this after hearing about this development, but I’m gonna guess that it is due to high gas prices and inflation. Used to be small town people would go to the big city on weekends, buy all their groceries, buy clothes and fillup their tanks. I know this because we used to go to Mitchell every Saturday to do the same thing growing up (I lived in rural Ethan). With inflation people are cutting back on buying luxuries in the big cities and buying groceries in their hometowns to save gas.
This may not be good for Sioux Falls, but it is good for smaller towns because it may help to revitalize them.
Heck yeah that’s why. I used to venture into Sioux Falls 2-3 times a week. Now it might be 1 time every 2 weeks. Interesting too is that we “ruralians” would drive to Sioux Falls to save money on groceries. Now that we’re all shopping in our small towns, the stores have stepped up and gotten competitive for our business. We don’t have everything in our local stores but it sure beats the hell out of screaming kids in Wal-Mart.
I think the part that worries me is our City Finance Director who has over 20 employees and makes more then the Mayor doesn’t know the answer to the question, yet a couple of hayseeds like ourselves do. Can you say ‘Pink Slip’? (He probably doesn’t know what that is either.)