Letter: Business owner questions ‘shop at home’ policies

Dear Editor:
“Shop at home!” The official mantra of our local government and the chamber of commerce.
Why is it when the same folks decide to have custom street signs made they shop out of town and do not allow the local sign guy the privilege of bidding on them? The same applies to county projects as you see very few local contractors working on their poorly managed projects.
The local business owners are burdened with commercial property tax rates, regulations and high utility prices, yet we are not recognized as a viable candidate in the bidding process. Even if you allowed a 20 percent margin in favor of the locals you would be money ahead as it would keep money in the local economy, save on freight and associated road trip expenses.
We are forced to support you, why aren’t you supporting us? If you’re not going to allow us to bid or put our name on your vendors’ list then revert our tax classification to residential—we can’t afford to pay our out-of-town competitors employees wages!
I’m sure some of you are wondering if the town manager/COC knows who the local sign guy is? Why, yes, they do, as I did get the rare privilege of bidding on some work for the OHV trail system. The town manager along with several town council/COC members, the outdoor consultant and I talked about it several times. I spent approximately 40-50 hours in research and gave them several multi-media presentations along with my proposal.
To this date I have not heard any response from them on that bid. Again, is this how you run your affairs? A similar version of this story can be heard from the few remaining business owners, the rest have closed their doors due largely to your current economic business practices.
Steve Lowe
SegoMan Designs
Rangely