Street Talk
How Can We Help? Don’t Hesitate To Ask
By Alexe van Beuren
It never hurts to ask: words to live by.
Asking has gotten me better tables at restaurants, discounts at hotels, and the exact product I was looking for at stores. (One thing I like so much about Sartain’s is that even if they don’t have an item in stock, it seems like they can order just about anything in the whole world.)
At the Main Street Association, it seems like we’re always asking. We ask the community for input on slogans. We ask the Main Street merchants to attend our mixer; to join our association; to come to a meeting; to sponsor an event.
When hardly any requests go unheard, I can’t help but be proud of our community.
But as the manager of the W.V.M.S.A., it is my job to make sure that our Association keeps working on our primary goal: to aid the Main Street of Water Valley.
I can sit in my office and come up with a list of things that needs doing (and I do!). But that is a dictatorship, and this is a democratic community.
And so once again, I am asking: what can the W.V.M.S.A. do?
Some things are out of our scope. We are a Main Street organization, so truancy rates at the high school or landscaping around the Route-Seven signs are not our jobs. (Main Street is big enough!)
But for every resident and business owner on Main Street, be it north or south–how can we help?
Please come to a meeting, or drop by our office, or grab me on the street, at the Farmers’ Market, or in Turnage’s over lunch, and let me know. Tell me your reservations about the Main Street program; let me know what events help or hinder your business; give me input on what kind of information you’d like to know– about grants, about rehabilitation tax credits, about how many lights it takes to wrap around a 20-foot Christmas tree!
I’m only a few weeks into this job. W.V.M.S.A. has formally existed for less than a year. So we don’t have all the answers.
But if you ask, we can find out– and together, we’ll come up with the right answers for Water Valley.
