Well, you can rest assured that our town will have a new phone book next March.

After the slowest start to the annual sales campaign for the Fountain Hills & Verde Communities Telephone Directory that I have seen in the 32 years we have been publishing it, income the last two weeks was greatly improved.

In this economy, everyone is holding on to their money as long as possible. That was quite apparent with the phone book.

The sales campaign began on August 15. From that point until about three weeks ago, we had only collected about $25,000. Considering we usually collect one-quarter of our company’s annual income during the first two months, when we offer a discount (This year it was 10 percent.), you must understand I was more than concerned if we would even publish a phone book this year.

Maybe too many people were paying attention to those TV ads that say the phone book is no longer of any use, I started thinking. But no, business is tough these days and most business operators were just waiting until the latest possible moment to place and pay for their orders for 2010 advertising.

Some of my buddies in The Club have told me they find it easier to find a service or a restaurant in our phone book than it is to go get on the computer and start doing searches to find the same information that you can find easily by going to the yelllow pages in our book.

Well, that’s enough of that discussion, let’s get on to the fun part of our discount period.  This is the second straight year we have given away five free half-page ads in the phone book. Each ad has a value of $1076. The business can place the ad in any category they choose.

The contest rules were simple: Buy an ad in the 2010 Fountain Hills phone book, pay for it by Oct. 15 and you were eligible for the drawing.

I did extend the deadline until Oct. 19. This past Thursday I drew the winning firms.

The winning businesses include: Elco Enterprises, Inc., Bodyworks, Jazy’s Alterations, Montgomery Engineering and Chuck Fosberg Insurance.

Congratulations, and may your complimentary ad and additional listing bring each of you many new customers.

The deadline for all advertising in the 2010 phone book is Jan. 8.

Incidentally, we have been running a coupon in the newspaper since early August asking people to fill it out and return it to us if they have changed their home phone from a land line to cell service. Quite a few people have already done that. And with that much response, we figure that there are many more who haven’t responded yet.

We want to keep our phone book as accurate and up-to-date as possible. To do that, we need your assistance.

So if you have changed to cell service at home, please take the time to fill one of the coupons and bring it to us. You may also fax the coupon or go online to send us the information. Our fax number is (480) 837-1951. The phone book information is on The Times Online web site. The address is fhtimes.com.

Speaking of changes, we are in the midst of a number of changes at our office. Approximately a month ago, Austin Yenglin left The Times staff to go to Antarctica. The Fountain Hills High School graduate is working as a janitor for six months at a research facility. He has taken several other trips to exotic places since graduating from high school. He hopes to make some contacts and get some direction on a future career.

He did a great job of supervising our newspaper delivery staff, maintaining our delivery route list and taking classified ads. He is greatly missed in the office.

We filled the position with a part-time person, Tammy Ott. She has demonstrated she is a great addition to our company.

In another cutback in expenses, I notified reporter and features writer Audree Peters that her position had been eliminated.

This economy is really tough!