Anaheim : Survey Seeks to Help Keep Sales Tax at Home

The city’s Chamber of Commerce set out this week to find out where Anaheim residents shop and eat out. But even before the survey of 500 residents is completed, chamber board of directors member Pamela Whishaw thinks she knows what the results will say.

“I have a good idea,” Whishaw said. And the picture is not one that Anaheim officials would be pleased with, she concluded.

Whishaw, who is spearheading the survey being conducted by a Santa Ana firm, predicts that residents are not buying their goods in Anaheim. Another study conducted several years ago revealed that Anaheim--Orange County’s largest city--had a “stodgy and conservative” image, she said, adding, “Anaheim was just not seen as a fast-moving city.”

Chamber president Floyd L. Farano said his group wants to encourage residents--and tourists--to buy their goods in the city instead of at nearby malls outside Anaheim. Sales taxes generated in Anaheim benefit the city’s residents, Farano said.

To increase sales and other forms of business in the city, the chamber is developing a “Re-Discover Anaheim” program. The first phase of that project is the survey. The results will be compiled into an audio-visual presentation to be shown to chamber members and other interested parties, Whishaw said.

The Re-Discover Anaheim program, complete with newspaper and radio advertisements, will cost about $500,000, Whishaw estimated. The audio-visual presentation is geared to generate money to pay for the program, she said.