Interestingly, we needed two of the same thing today. One for a cake project and one for a dish garden Cathy put together at work. A toy fire truck. Simple, right ? We needed two Matchbox-sized ones. That's it.
I went to three places in Cumberland: Dollar General on the Boulevard, Family Dollar and Rose's in the Queen City Center. With the amount of Fire/EMS folk around here, you'd think, but no....no Matchbox-sized fire trucks.
Really, I'm trying to shop in Cumberland, since I pay taxes here (and to the county), but I would have saved time and money (gas) by doing what I ended up doing - going to Wal-Mart. Five minutes, I had what I needed.
I would have tried Downtown Dollar, but no parking. Mayor Grim suggests using the parking garage on Mechanic Street, but why should anyone shopping the downtown mall , needing one item from one place, have to do that ? Not to mention, folks think it's okay to parallel park and take up two spaces on Center Street. Don't we have Code Enforcement Officers that we pay to cover that ? I'm not even sure at this point that Downtown Dollar would have had what I needed.
Mayor Grim is great, but this town needs tax breaks for larger stores to come in. I'm sorry, but the Mom and Pop stores can't compete price/selection wise, and frankly, it's cheaper for us to drive to Lavale to get what we need. It costs more in gas to drive to several places in Cumberland and find nothing, than one trip to Wal-Mart.
When I don't find what I need in Cumberland, I still haven't contributed to the economy, other than the gas stations.
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