The inconvenient truth of a destination place

It was a great day to be in beautiful downtown Navasota this past Saturday! Moms, dads and grandparents brought their children out for an afternoon of FREE fun activities and the opportunity to sit on Santa’s lap. Winter-like temperatures might have provided a more Currier and Ives ambience at the “ice rink,” but from what I saw, the children’s concern was staying upright on their skates.

The Christmas Parade gets bigger and better every year, from the number of participants and the effort they put into their floats to the number of parade watchers. And there was an exceedingly large turnout for Saturday night’s parade! Lined up on both sides of Washington Avenue for a mile were all ages, races, ethnicities, political persuasions, all enjoying what was truly the epitome of a small-town Texas Christmas! As Goldilocks might say, it was not to small, not too big, it was just right!

During the day there was a lot of traffic on Washington Avenue and hopefully that translated to increased sales at Navasota’s businesses. I have to confess that we who live here might have complained about that traffic or about those people taking our parking spaces. And our wait at Classic Rock or 4141 might have been a little longer, but their presence is something we need to put on our list of things to be thankful for this year.

When I became a Grimes County property owner in 1994, and as someone outside looking in, Navasota seemed stagnant. It had very little to entice me to spend my money, and with a fulltime job, I did have discretionary dollars to spend then. The only place I wanted to shop was Pookie’s Past and Present, or maybe Granny’s Collectibles to increase my “Made in Occupied Japan” teacups and saucers. But that has changed, thanks to the leadership of City Manager Brad Stafford, city council and the Navasota Grimes County Chamber of Commerce.

The cold, hard fact is we can’t support our city services with our dollars alone, no matter how much shopping local we do. Our city property taxes don’t cover the cost of police and fire protection. While I think I pay too many utility fees, at least I reap the benefit of those dollars spent when I flush my toilet without it backing up. I know my dollars are replacing inefficient meters and sewer lines and will soon help alleviate downtown flooding with new 7 x 7-foot box culverts. Oh, and another thing about small-town living, if you want to know exactly where your money is going, all you have to do is stop by City Hall and visit with Stafford. He’ll give you the good, the bad and the ugly about the city budget!

It’s good news that Navasota’s goal as a destination place is being realized. The word is out about our quaint, charming downtown and visitors from all over come here to shop. I mean, where else in the Brazos Valley can you buy Annie Sloan paint except at Vintage 105? Stonecroft Marketplace and P. Nemir cater to men as well as women when it comes to clothing and unique and tasteful gifts.

While the crowds and the traffic can be annoying or inconvenient for us locals, the money visitors spend and the sales tax generated benefits all of us in Grimes County. The State Comptroller distributes a portion of Navasota sales tax to Grimes County government to be utilized for county services. So, folks wherever you live in Grimes County, we’re in this together!

But for those of us within the Navasota city limits, Saturday’s wonderful FREE family activities, our library and park facilities, new parking lots, street and drainage work and other city services are provided in part by the sales tax paid by the visitors to our town and we should never take that for granted.

So as inconvenient as the traffic and wait may be, a friendly “hello” to a visitor might be in order. Afterall, today’s visitor might become your next-door neighbor tomorrow!

Connie Clements is a freelance reporter and award-winning columnist. She writes feature news articles on a weekly basis and an opinion column as the mood strikes her.