Video: City and Residents Affected By Wal-Mart’s Closing

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DERMA, Miss. (WCBI)- It’s been almost three months since the small town of Derma got a huge blow when Walmart closed its doors.

The neighborhood store generated a lot of revenue for the Calhoun County town.

Now, with the store gone residents are now left without a grocery store.
“Just one morning you come to work and you receive a phone call that says Walmart just told their employees that they’re closing, and that’s devastating to us,” said town clerk Joanna James.

It was a store where customers could get almost everything they needed in one place.

“We were able to get groceries, gas, as well as medications,” said James.

Now, the store is proving to be a big loss for residents.

“I want Walmart to stay in town,” said Derma resident Michael Mason.

“Most people don’t have cars, so they were able to walk to Walmart because it’s not that far, but now that’s not the case,” said Derma resident Shirley Holloway.

Holloway said now that the store is gone, she is forced to take her cash out of town to shop, which can be a big inconvenience.

“We all miss it so bad,” said Holloway.  “It’s inconvenient on the count of I can’t jump in my vehicle and run to the store and pick up what me or my mother especially needs.”
Now with Walmart being removed from the city, residents aren’t the only ones suffering, the city took a major financial hit as well.

“Financial, sales tax numbers are down,” said James.

James said she can’t determine for sure how much money the city loss due to the store being gone, however, she knows it was a big blow.

“We would normally be around five to six thousand dollars a month,” she said. “With walmart, it was around ten thousand dollars so it cut us in half.”

For now, the building still remains empty.

However, shoppers in this Calhoun County town hope a similar store will fill the empty space.

“Put something back in there they would can use to buy groceries,” said Holloway.
The most recent numbers show Derma had 27 hundred dollars in sales tax revenue.

It’s a big drop when compared to last year’s totals that were just over 11 thousand dollars when WalMart was open.

James said the company is negotiating on a price for the building and doing reprisals.