The Death of Main Street, Rhode Island
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Rhode Island’s compact physical size, the smallest in the nation, has always been a defining feature of our state. But smallness is also a chief characteristic of the local businesses which dot the main streets and storefront avenues which run throughout Rhode Island’s communities.
Small businesses, which number roughly 35,000, including the micro-sized enterprises which can have as few as five or less workers, employ over half of the state’s workforce. The small, family-owned or two-partner owned business profile is why in this tightest of tight-knit states, there is an indelible connection between the local small business and the wider community. The owners of the local shop fronts, whether they are running a small repair business, dry cleaning service, general goods store, or beauty salon are owned and operated by people who are either residents of the very community hosting the business or live in a nearby city or town.
Local communities in Rhode Island, regardless of whether they are technically designated as a town or city, seem to all possess a small-town feel which many transplants here have cited over the years as a very appealing and unique characteristic of the state. It’s a trait that is often cited as to why a reduced income level likely to be earned here in comparison to larger states represents a worthwhile trade-off.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThat is why as the debate heats up in coming days and weeks over Governor Chafee’s budget, including a proposed 6 percent sales tax on services conducted by the very enterprises which are at the heart of many local Main Streets, there is more at stake than this Governor and his team seem to comprehend.
It is encouraging and critically important to see that a homegrown coalition of salon owners have banded together to fight the Chafee tax plan and they need to see wider input and support from related businesses so they speak with a clear and very loud voice about what’s at stake if the Governor’s tax approach prevails. (Details on the group, RI Salons United Against Taxing Services, can be found at founder Lyn Jennings Facebook page.) Those small business owners, many of them women, will tell you they are trying to hold on to a fragile customer base which is destined to shrink further if new taxes are approved on the services they provide. The Governor made a “choreographed for the news cameras” visit to a select few Main Streets in the state recently, but, make no mistake about it, his budget approach is aimed at dismantling the heart of small local businesses.
Maybe Chafee needs to be driven to more main streets and deteriorating business districts in a few more cities and towns because he would be alarmed at what he would see. The stagnant For Sale/For Lease/ For Rent storefront signs dotting major avenues are about to increase in volume if Chafee’s tax plan goes through. Those signs represent a domino effect of loss that is taking hold in all too many communities.
Here’s how the loss cycle goes: First it’s the owner or owners’ loss of a business. Then it represents the lost tax revenue to the town or city by the shuttered business. Then it represents a lost convenience to the town consumers of a local service or goods supplier. In many cases, it may represent a lost valued member of the wider community, a valued contributor or steward of other town endeavors, commissions, boards or local charities. It may represent a lost homeowner/property taxpayer to the town who moves out when the business closes. Though the loss of one individual business may impact a community narrowly, what’s going on in our state right now is the wholesale loss of entire blocks of business thoroughfares and portions of entire main streets.
As more and more homegrown businesses vanish from the shopping districts and avenues of our local downtowns, they are not being replaced quickly—if at all--by new enterprises. The only thing replacing the once thriving businesses is a growing sense of community deterioration.
Governor Chafee, by willfully choosing a budget path that ignores other options---including finding possibly tens of millions more in savings through public sector concessions and tighter spending controls – and instead proposing a tax policy that will choke out the customer base from the already struggling main street businesses–is going to be driving more small businesses out of business.
The long-term impact will be the death of many Main Streets throughout Rhode Island, which is certain to steer us down a path we surely won’t like.
Donna Perry is a Communications Consultant to the RI Statewide Coalition www.statewidecoalition.com
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