![]() |
Brought to you by East Alabama Regional Planning Commission
Thursday, July 5, 2012
We may be free of severe weather today, but this weekend may be a good time to start thinking about how your family can be prepared for the next round of storms. The first ever state sales tax holiday for severe weather preparedness starts at midnight tonight and local stores are gearing up.
Some of the obvious ones include most batteries, including cellphone batteries and chargers. Items on the list include tarps, plywood for covering windows and doors, duct tape for patching things together, artificial or reusable ice, and gas cans and the biggest ticket item, generators. Academy Sports and Outdoors in Hoover has stocked up on all of those and has a special display ready in the front of their store for customers. Store officials expect some customers to take advantage of the tax-free status for big price items like the generators, but most purchases will be small things, they think. "We've been preparing by bringing in generators, extra batteries, those necessities we think our customers need just in case they go through a storm or something like that," said Brandon Holt, manager at Academy. At the Verizon store at The Summit they'll have cell phone batteries for sale and a disaster preparedness checklist ready for customers. "It's gonna drive a lot of traffic here to us, specifically in our category it's more for cellphones and cellphone chargers," said Kerry Gould, District Manager for Verizon. "Most people will be coming in for those." So how much business will this bring to local stores? Holt predicts this weekend will bring in 25% to 50% of the traffic that the tax-free back to school weekend generates in August. For a list of which cities are participating, visit: http://revenue.alabama.gov/salestax/WPholiday.htm For a list of the items for sale tax-free this weekend, visit: http://www.revenue.alabama.gov/salestax/WPHolidayQuickRefSheet12.pdf
Dental Health is Important for Children's 'Baby Teeth'
Lamb Chops and Red Wine: A Perfect Easter Pairing
Alabama Department of Public Health issues 2016 Fish Consumption
Aquarium animals and plants should never be released in the wild
Keywords: weather preparedness tax holiday, severe weather, Alabama,
Visit Local News
There currently are no approved comments for this blog article. To join the discussion click here.