When Weinberg freshman Bonnie Kaplan needed a new pair of running shoes, she didn’t race to the nearest downtown Evanston shoe store but instead sat down at her computer.

“I thought the selection online would be much better,” Kaplan said. “I can order any type of shoe I want. I don’t have to worry about them not having my size or the style I like. The Internet is open all the time and cheaper because there are all kinds of sales.”

It is consumers like Kaplan, who has bought other items including books and clothes on the Internet, that worry some Evanston city officials and members of the business community.

“Commerce over the electronic media is not taxable,” said Ald. Gene Feldman (9th). “The city gets a lot of revenue from retail sales and e-commerce is taking up an ever-increasing percentage of that revenue.”

The three-year moratorium Congress placed on taxing Internet sales is due to end in October 2001. At that point, Congress hopes to have a clear approach to taxing Web retailers.

The 11-member Congressional Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce did not meet its April 2000 deadline of reaching a consensus on taxation but is leaning toward as little regulation as possible.

“The lack of taxes on Internet (retailers) gives them a one-up on ground-level retailers that have to pay property taxes,” said Troy Thiel, director of the Evanston Small Business Association. “It also has a definite negative impact on the receivers of the sales tax coming from ‘brick and mortar’ retailers.”

The “brick and mortar” retailers — businesses with a physical presence — have to pay fees not applicable to online retailers, which gives them a disadvantage in today’s economy, Feldman said.

But Jonathan Perman, director of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce, cited a lack of statistics and the general upward trend of Evanston sales tax revenue as reasons not to worry about the effects of Internet commerce.

“We don’t have any figures on it,” Perman said. “The question is whether there are just more sales being made, rather than if there is an actual shift of sales being made from the stores to the Internet. Sales tax revenue is increasing more than the rate of inflation in Evanston because the economy here is good.”

And there are advantages for local businesses in advertising and selling products online. The creation of eTropolis Evanston, a project to provide high-speed Internet access, is going to allow retailers to sell their products online to local residents.

Part of the eTropolis Evanston project includes an interactive electronic city with community information, city services and Evanston businesses online that will be ready by this May, said Martha Rosenberg, the information contact for Evanston Inventure, an economic development organization.

“Half of all American people are on the Internet,” Rosenberg said. “And Evanston is way above the national average. We have a pool of very educated, very academic people who are just naturally attracted to online shopping and will utilize this project to buy from Evanston stores.”

With the addition of an online presence, many downtown businesses will benefit from e-commerce, said Terry Jenkins, executive director of Evmark, the entity that manages and markets eTropolis.

“We are in the embryonic stages of Evanston getting involved in online retail,” Jenkins said. “Thus far, we are not having anyone reporting that e-commerce is hurting their businesses.”

Yet Jeff Rice, owner of Great Expectations Book Store, 911 Foster St., said Internet commerce has had a definite negative effect on his business.

“There is no question that we have noticed a decline in our mail-order business,” Rice said. “People who used to order from us now order from Amazon.com.”

The fact that the Internet is still a tax-free economy is “absolutely insane,” said Rice, who sees the loss of sales tax revenue as a drain on the funds that go to schools and other public entities.

“It strikes me as odd that the Internet would never have existed if it weren’t for government funding,” Thiel said. “The government helped create a system that in the long run is making it lose money. But the Internet is an economic engine. And while it is obvious that it has negatively impacted some Evanston sectors, counterbalancing those effects is that our Research Park is doing well with Internet ventures.”