Hey Courtney,
Local directories are still valuable, however there is a difference between **local listings and directories. **
There are thousands of directories out there that hold no value for your website For example, http://www.freedirectory-list.com/free-directory-list.php check out all the directories listed on this site.
Instead of submitting your site to all of those directories, check out local listings such as yelp, yellowpages, google places, bing local, Yahoo's directory, superpages, citysearch.