You can make your downtown better

Local government can have new paving stones installed. Your Hempstead town council member can direct some taxpayer money toward façade improvements. A county legislator can steer money to fund new street lamps and garbage cans. The Public Works Department can clean the streets more often. Villages can devise parking schemes that satisfy storeowners.

But we all know a façade for what it is: an attractive face that hides a less pleasant reality.

The reality of owning and operating a small business in one of our South Shore downtowns is tough. While stores and professional-service providers have always had competition, now they battle a hydra of big-box outlets, malls, online shopping, customers’ stagnant wages, higher transportation costs to stock the shelves and higher property taxes.

Prettier streetlights and higher-end signage can’t fix this. But you can.

Shop in your local stores. Dine at your local restaurants. Use the services of your local doctors, dentists, chiropractors, attorneys, accountants and contractors.

The money you spend downtown not only increases business owners’ revenues, it also provides the resources for those businesses to purchase more inventory, hire more people in the community to help you find what you’re looking for, and improve their operations without the need for any of your tax money.

The money you spend downtown generates sales taxes, which ultimately fund the services you need and that your village, town, county and state provide.

The money you spend downtown helps local shopkeepers sponsor Little League teams, join Chambers of Commerce to enhance the business community, organize street fairs and do good work for neighborhood schools.

We can’t have it both ways. We can’t complain that the suburban character of our neighborhoods is being subsumed into dense developments of megastores while we drive small businesses out by ignoring their value in preserving the very suburban character we so prize. We rail against multiple-unit residences downtown — which would bring customers to local businesses — saying such housing kills the neighborhood, but we take our shopping dollars elsewhere, helping to create vacant storefronts and abandoned businesses, the last thing we want on our quaint Long Island main streets.

In mythology, Hydra could be slain only by Hercules. You can be part of a Herculean effort to revitalize our villages and towns by going downtown and patronizing your local businesses this weekend, and all year round.

Shopping locally isn’t something you should do just for small-business owners. It’s something you should do for your community.