Issue date: 8/17/06 Section: News

Buck Wild, located on Foothill Boulevard, has recently had to raise its prices to $1.25 due to increasing gas costs.

It's a vicious cycle: Local businesses depend on students to buy their products and students depend on the businesses for income. But when gas prices go up and students go home for the summer, businesses are scrambling to fill the void.

Ed Dutton Jr. and his wife Ybonne Dutton didn't want to raise their prices at Buck Wild on Foothill Boulevard, but they had no choice. Since opening their store on Foothill Boulevard in October, the couple prided themselves on owning the only dollar store in San Luis Obispo that actually sold everything for a dollar. But the price of gas changed all that.

"Everything is made out of oil - all the plastic and everything," Ed Dutton said about the store's products. Ybonne Dutton added that the cost of transporting the products via trucks also became particularly more expensive with the increasing gas costs.

Finally, the couple decided a few weeks ago to raise the price of most of their merchandise to $1.25 (with the exception of the "over $1" section) and waited for the aftermath. But it wasn't what they had expected.

"We thought it would be a lot worse," Ed Dutton said. "We gave it a two- to three-week notice and (our business) never changed."

Brent Goodman, director for Cal Poly's Institutional Planning and Analysis, said 3,926 students registered for classes for summer 2006. Though this number is greater than last year's 3,734 students and substantially higher than the 816 students in summer 2004, Goodman said summer quarter has always been around but some summers draw more students than others.

"Everybody's really supportive of us around here," Ybonne Dutton said. "We were really nervous about it."

But there's one thing they're still worried about: how the returning students will respond to the prices.

Bill Statler, director of finance and information technology for the city of San Luis Obispo, estimated that about one-third of San Luis Obispo's population is comprised of college students.

"Obviously, if they're one-third of our population, they're a significant part of our economy," he said.

While that is good news for local businesses, many of them may suffer when students aren't in school. This summer has been particularly painful for some, as approximately four-fifths of the student population is gone, not including students who stayed in San Luis Obispo for purposes other than taking classes.

Continued...

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