With the continued downturn in the local economy, municipalities are looking for innovative ways to raise funds for public projects, such as a municipal pool in Crane. Faced with budget concerns, many towns across the Ozarks are considering new methods of funding items that will have a zero impact on general funds.
The Ozarks Sentinel, which began development of local web sites for all towns in Stone County earlier this month, has entered in to a partnership with more than 130 online stores in an effort to provide an additional revenue stream for these types of public projects. The stores include many of the nation’s biggest retailers such as Walmart, and each store is offering substantial savings for online purchases, and many are including free shipping. In order to assist with the non-traditional method of funding to public projects, a portion of each sale made through the online mall will be distributed to each community within Stone County.
Managing editor, Dave Warren, said the new site allows online shoppers to find thousands of items in a variety of categories at prices well below retail.
“That means residents shopping at the online mall can save a lot of their hard earned money, and at the same time, help projects in their town or their neighbor’s town,” he said.
“Online shopping has increased to the point that last holiday season it was on par with physical shopping, nationwide,” Warren added. “It just made sense to align with some of the nation’s biggest stores and provide a gateway for area residents to experience online shopping while at the same time assisting towns to raise funds for public projects without impacting their budgets or their taxpayer base.”
The newspaper has already launched sites for Lampe, Branson West, Crane and Kimberling City and will soon launch ones for Blue Eye, Galena and Stone County. The new community sites may be reached by adding online.us to the end of the town (such as www.craneonline.us or www.lampeonline.us. Each site has a wealth of area information, discussion boards, history and more. The newspaper’s long range plan is for each community to utilize the many features of the sites to help promote their municipality and events as well as establish dialogue between residents.
The new online shopping mall may be reached through any of the community sites, or directly by entering the url www.craneonline.com/shopping.

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