The best way to support our local economy is to support our local independent businesses.

When we shop or eat at a Tucson-owned business, those dollars stay here in Tucson to help pay our wages, keep our homes safe from crime and fire, build our roads, and enrich our lives in many ways.

When we shop or eat at a large national chain, we may save a few bucks here and there, but we’re sending our money back to Arkansas or Georgia or California or Texas to help build their economies instead of ours.

I know it’s tough to decide pay a little more to buy local in a town like Tucson with low wages, but if we make that sacrifice, our economy will grow, and our local businesses will be able to expand, pay more, and enable us to earn more than enough to offset that initial sacrifice.

Our city should do the same. Our purchasing department needs to give preference to Tucson-owned businesses to make sure our tax dollars are spent right here where they are collected.

As a small-business owner myself (Stephen Farley Design, a graphic design and public art business), I know that it’s not easy to keep a business thriving and keep up with the governmental paperwork on every level while you work on marketing, accounting, personnel, and creating & selling your product or service.

We need to look very carefully at what obstacles local businesses have to face. One of those is the Business Personal Property Tax, a tax which punishes small businesses for making investments in business property, and forces a time-consuming accounting process to figure out the tax due. We need to lobby the State Legislature to reduce or eliminate this tax and replace those revenues with a form of tax that does not punish investment in our community.

We must also work closely with the University of Arizona to identify and nurture the innovative new businesses being cooked up in University research departments which could take off and become the next high-tech miracle businesses. Growing our own success stories beats competing against every other city to attract the success stories everyone already knows about.

When I am a councilmember, local small business owners will find a friendly ear and a helping hand in the Ward 6 council office to cut through red tape and enable them to grow and give more back to our local economy.