The 19% Problem

Tourism may help fund Moore County, but residents cannot hand off the work of sustaining the community

#Opinion | 7:03 a.m. July 2, 2026

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This guest submission is from Shelly Maynard.

I keep hearing the same refrain every budget season: Tourism will save us. Raise the tax; tourists will cover it. Fund the project; tourists will pay for it. Depend on visitors, not residents.

Here's a number worth sitting with: By the county's own tourism figures, only 19% of Lynchburg's local shopping traffic comes from locals. The vast majority of what our shops and restaurants see day to day is visitor traffic, not us.

I understand why we lean on it. Jack Daniel's put Moore County on a map most towns our size never make. But there's a difference between welcoming visitors and outsourcing our responsibility to them.

Tourists don't vote here. They don't sit in our classrooms. They don't pay for 911, fire, and police when there's a wreck on Highway 55. We do, every day, all year, regardless of the tour bus schedule. Being a good steward of this community means showing up for it whether or not a visitor happens to be watching.

That 19% is a mirror, and most of us don't like what it shows. It should raise a real question: What would it take to get more of our own dollars staying in Lynchburg – 25%, 50%? That's a harder question than “How do we attract more tourists?” but it's the one that actually builds a sustainable community instead of a seasonal one.

Stewardship isn't a line item for a budget meeting. It's a daily habit, and right now, too many of us have handed that habit off to somebody else.

I moved here nearly 20 years ago, when tourism was carrying its weight. I remember walking shoulder-to-shoulder with BBQ crowds around the Square, toddlers in tow. These days, the vendors are spread far enough apart to drive a truck between them. Times have changed, whether we've admitted it or not.

I'm not saying we stop being a tourist town – if you've got it, flaunt it. But we need to look seriously at becoming more than that.

My husband and I raised our two boys here, pre-K through graduation, and we fundraised for nearly everything they did. If you know my husband, you know he could sell a cow patty back to the source. That's how good a salesman he is.

What we learned is that people love to give back to this community. The question is whether that instinct shows up as a daily habit or only during fundraiser season.

There are always efficiencies a budget hasn't found yet and cuts worth making. But there's also always a choice about who a community asks to carry its weight and whether we're willing to carry some of it ourselves.

Good stewardship doesn't get to be optional just because tourism makes it easy to look away. We live here. We are the community, 12 months a year, not just when the Square is full.

It's time our budget planning, and our own habits, started acting like it.

– Shelly Maynard