Loss of Labor Day Weekend To Local Economy

[Joe]

I was watching the news last weekend and there were no traffic jams coming back from the Cape or from Newport, on Labor Day weekend.
This is of course, because the kids go back to school earlier than they used to so our tourism industry loses the last long weekend of the summer - we pretty much lose the last week also. Our high summer season does not even entail two full months. I went over to Block Island and there were a lot of stores that were not coming back. A good Labor Day weekend would mean a great deal to the merchants and would also boost tax revenues.
So here we are in an area with the number one industry being tourism, and we've shortened our already short season by a week. That's something that really needs to be revisited.