Shop around, city, but buy right here in town

Lou Marzeles
News Editor

     Maybe somewhere out there on that fabled information superhighway they call the internet, there is a metaphoric off-ramp, a mega-convenient web site, for cities to do their one-stop shopping.
     "Come and get your stuff!" a banner on the site might proudly urge. "We've just foreclosed on a town in northern Arizona, where hardly anybody lives and nobody in their right mind goes-we've got high-quality used stuff we picked up there that your city needs right now, at bargain-basement prices! Need a new overpass? This one's barely been used! How about a nice municipal parking lot? We must be crazy to be selling ours at this price!"
     Such a site would be very convenient. What city wouldn't want to be able to browse for its purchases through an online catalog, like a kind of Fingerhut for municipalities? ("Come on, Goldendale-don't let this be your last catalog!")
     If there were to come such a site, it better get its merchandise locally.
     That's the message loud and clear these days. A city that doesn't look to making as many of its requisite purchases in its own back yard is seriously playing with fire. And of course, nobody expects any city to be able to buy everything it needs from local businesses if those businesses can't or won't put in reasonable bids or provide the required products or services.
     But if those local businesse can and do put in good bids and have what is needed, a city that would still go shopping out of town can expect only the ire of its citizenry, and deservedly so.
     At a recent Java Talk meeting, the topic of a city resolution for Goldendale to buy locally, similar to that recently enacted in White Salmon, came up, and Mayor Parton listened carefully and respectfully to the suggestion. There is, of course, a city council that would have to come on board to back the idea, but it's a good one. There's no way around it. There isn't a thing to lose in the city committing itself to such a policy, and only a wealth of goodwill to be gained, not to mention benefitting from the impact of a sheer inspirational gesture of a message to the community that the city stands behind its businesses. That also means that the businesses would have to step up to stand behind the city, in terms of doing all reasonably possible to give the city what it needs as often as possible.
     There is no down side here. We urge the city to resolve to pass a buy-locally resolution.