By KAYLA J. MARSH
Staff Writer
HAZLET – Township officials have approved the implementation of a new program aimed at stimulating commerce in the community and rewarding residents who shop locally.
In a recent interview, Deputy Mayor Susan Kiley said that the new Shop Hazlet program would be a benefit for both businesses and residents.
“There are multiple steps in making this come to fruition,” she said. “We talked to other towns, met with other mayors and talked to both Republican and Democratic party members because we wanted to hear from both sides about the pros and cons of adopting a program such as this.
“We also invited many local business owners to a session and spoke with them about the program and asked what they thought and would they be interested in joining, and many were enthusiastic.”
According to Kiley, the idea behind Shop Hazlet is simple — it is a property tax rewards card program that allows residents to purchase items at local participating stores, while a percentage of the sale is credited towards their individual property tax bill.
While residents benefit through a lower bill, local businesses benefit by the increased patronage.
“I personally think it will be a win-win,” Kiley said.
After the Township Committee passed a resolution at a June 6 meeting approving Shop Hazlet, Kiley said that the next steps include officially putting everything into place. The first step is for the owners to fill out an application to register their business to be involved.
“The way the program works, is that a business can determine themselves what kind of discount they want to offer to patrons,” Kiley said.
“Lets say they want to offer a 10-percent discount and a patron has a bill of $100, they would pay the full price and the business will already have set up an account for the program so they would take $90 of the total and it would go into their own account and the remaining $10 would go into the patron’s personal account, which goes towards lowering their property tax bill.”
Kiley said participating residents would register online, too, imputing block and lot number, and they will then receive a card they can use anytime they shop at a participating business.
“Anything that we can do to lower tax bills at the end of the year, I think people are going to want,” she said.
Renters, and even those who may come shopping in Hazlet for a particular store or item, would also be able to sign up and get a card for the program and would get a check at end of year.
Kiley said the biggest challenge going forward would be marketing and promoting the program.
“We want to do whatever we can to make residents aware that this is coming soon,” she said.
While more work needs to be done before implementation takes place, in the coming months residents will be able to access a list of participating businesses on the township website, at the municipal building on Union Avenue and elsewhere.
“This program is designed to help small business in Hazlet,” Kiley said. “What we’ve heard from other towns is that businesses are seeing lots more business, whether it’s new patrons or frequent patrons coming in even more.”
While a name hasn’t yet been revealed, Kiley said the township has a local business which will sponsor the cards residents will use, a $1 fee per card, “however he wants to know have businesses signed up before investing a large amount of money into the program … so we are working hard to make sure we have a pretty solid program.”
“We’re a small town. We don’t have a lot of the big businesses … and we’re trying to find a way to lower property taxes and keep businesses here and bring new ones in to help even more,” Kiley said.
“We’re hoping to launch this in the fall and I believe it will be a great thing for the community.”