A Few Words from Jim – July 2022

Talent is open for business

The city of Talent has an awesome Mayor. Mayor Darby stepped up on the night of the Almeda Fire in 2020 and hasn’t stepped back since. I’m a huge fan of her compassion and tenacity. I didn’t really know her before but I have enjoyed working with her since. Talent lost 65% of its businesses in the fire. Mayor Darby has been spearheading efforts that she calls Boost & Amplify to help the surviving businesses thrive again while they rebuild the business community. 

A community is not complete without local businesses and she is working hard to make sure the businesses that are there can stay in business and that construction can start to provide space for new businesses. 

Check out the Talent Business Alliance website at https://www.talentbusinessalliance.org/ and see what you can do to help. If you are a Talent based business you can apply for a Boost and Amplify grant online. 

I’ve made a commitment to visit Talent more often and at least buy lunch at different locations when I’m there for meetings. 

Gas Prices and Electric Cars

A friend posted on social the other day that you have to pay for electricity to recharge your electric vehicle in an attempt to make sure everyone understands that gas is better. It’s true, it does cost money to recharge your batteries. Someone has to pay. Even though the city provides free charging in Ashland and so does Southern Oregon University, they pay for me to recharge my car at no cost. When it’s home in the garage, I plug it in and it charges slowly and yes I pay for that power. The only way to not pay for power, would be to prepay for solar panels and a storage system like Tesla’s Powerwall and other than the cost of the hardware, all my power would be free. I used online tools to calculate how much it would be to charge a Ford Lightning Truck. The prices in Oregon vary from $10 to $40. That is a lot cheaper than the $180 my wife, Dena,  just paid to refill her truck and she does this at least twice a week to go ride her horse.  

We also have a Chevy Volt hybrid. Dena uses it to drive to the office and back on days she is not driving her truck. If she just does that, plus occasional in town errands, she never uses gas and she never has to buy gas. If she goes on a long trip the gas engine takes over automatically and she can fill up at any gas station. 

As a small business owner with a fleet of vehicles, I’m seriously considering electric or hybrid for my next cars and trucks. I’m not doing it to be green. I’m not worried about running out of power. I’m more worried about making the car payment. 

I’m also considering the FUV by Arcimoto for my in town vehicle. They have a version with a flatbed and a version for deliveries and they start at $18,000. https://www.arcimoto.com/

What do you think about electric cars or hybrids for business use? Send me your thoughts at Jim@ProjectA.com. 

Thanks for reading. 

Looking forward,

Jim
Jim@SouthernOregonBusiness.com