Dealing for hours> Waldo barter system uses colorful currency in trade

Kip received 10 of them for doing a printing job. He then went and used four of them to get physical therapy.

Caroline was giving piano lessons in exchange for them, when someone actually phoned her in order to ask if she’d be willing to accept dollars for her tuition instead of them!

Ben sold his Subaru for 15, and says, “I’m very pleased with and certainly feel that it has its place in supporting the local economy.”

What exactly is occurring here?

Introducing the newest currency in town — Waldo hOURS — and the man who organized the system, Gary Robb of Unity.

Robb’s the man behind Waldo County’s fledgling barter-exchange program.

Beyond a small, pink, handwritten sign and above the Unity Co-op store is Robb’s cluttered offices, where he also manages the Community Newspaper.

Unlike a pure barter system, where goods or services are directly exchanged for one another, the Waldo hOURS system issues actual notes of local currency. The brightly colored, red “one hour” notes and blue “half-hour” notes, emblazoned with the motto “In Each Other We Trust,” have a dollar equivalency of $10 and $5 respectively. They represent participants’ time, and are based on the average hourly wage in the county.

The notes are usable in exactly the same way as federal money. And they can be utilized as either part or full payment for the services or products offered by others participating in the system.

It works like this: A directory of members is published monthly in the Community Newspaper — the free newspaper which is distributed to retail locations in a 12-mile radius of Unity — listing the services for which members are willing to buy or sell in exchange for Waldo hOURS.

There are two ways of joining. Members can pay $13 in federal notes, for which they receive eight Waldo hOURS (an $80 value) and three free listings in the Community Newspaper, running for three months, or they can pay $20 federal to receive eight “hours,” and three free listings running for an entire year. After this, listings cost from $3 for three listings for three months — 25 percent of which can be paid with “hours.” Although all this may sound complicated on paper, in practice it’s just as easy as using regular money.

Started almost one year ago with 20 recruits, Waldo hOURS is the spiritual child of a near identical 5-year-old program in Ithaca, N.Y. This year, the scheme has more than tripled in size and is still expanding.

With about $10,000 worth of hours issued, and boasting around 70 participants, Waldo hOURS is starting to benefit a whole range of individuals and businesses across Waldo County.

Like so many good ideas, this is not a new one. Barter has been used by humanity since before recorded time, and historically, local currency has been commonplace in the United States.

All manner of items, from corn to colored beads, have been used as money through the years, although the practice nearly ended with the passing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Twenty years later, during the Depression, more than 400 communities issued local notes in order to supplement a scarcity of federal currency and help prop up local economies. Although no one would pretend that times in the mid-’90s are comparable in hardship to those Depression years, the concept of towns and counties issuing their own forms of currency is still interesting.

The chief benefit locally of using Waldo hOURS is the fact that they are valueless outside the county.

“If you pay [a large company] and that money goes to wherever their headquarters is, a lot of that money isn’t reinvested in the community,” says Robb. Since hOURS are circulated only locally, they support the community directly, encouraging local people to use local business, and each other, for services which might otherwise have been bought in from outside.

Secondarily, Robb points out, it’s a “way for people to get to know one another, almost like an extended community, and also a way for like minds to find a way in which they can develop their own talents and skills.”

Robb has been deeply interested in different forms of exchange for about 20 years. During that time, he has traveled across the United States and Australia studying alternative communities and economies. He has spent entire months avoiding the use of money, using his skills as a chiropractor in order to barter for all of his needs, from food to rent.

But while acknowledging that this would clearly not be for everyone, he is passionate that hOURS — “with the emphasis on `OURS’ ” — will help everyone.

“People have talents which they might not feel right about charging money for, but [that] they might want to start using,” says Robb.

For all manner of people, hOURS provides an opportunity to receive credit for services they wouldn’t think of asking payment in cash for. Furthermore, with the hOUR set at $10, some $5.25 above minimum wage, “it’s an opportunity [for lower wage earners] to receive a higher wage,” he says.

But note, the Internal Revenue Service points out that although exchanges of nonprofessional goods and services are not taxable, exchanges of business goods and services are taxable at their “fair market value,” which is calculated by the barterers. This is up to the individual participants to declare.

The scheme is also helping local businesses in one final way — through the issuing of grants of hOURS. Members of the Waldo hOURS system, during their monthly potluck dinners-committee meetings, have already approved and issued several grants to diverse groups such as Teen Parents in Belfast, Forest Friends in Montville and the Unity Recycling Center, in order to help pay for improvements, and give some reward to loyal volunteers.

Robb says that projects similar to Waldo hOURS are under consideration in a number of locations, such as Farmington, Blue Hill and the Camden area, but all require one important ingredient: the participation of the local people.

The Waldo hOURS program can be joined at a variety of places around Waldo County, including both the Belfast and Unity co-ops, and at the monthly potluck dinners. For more information contact Gary Robb at 948-6162.