PUBLIC INPUT SESSION: Owners Express Opposition

REGISTRY PROGRAM PROPOSAL MET WITH RESISTANCE

— Resistance to a proposed business license and registry program is mounting as opposition businesses question the program’s necessity, quality of information collected, participation rates and the overall annual cost to small businesses.

Supporters of the program say it’s needed to collect “accurate economic performance data” in the form of business types, size, number of employees and health and safety information.

Aaron Stahl, owner of Waste Consulting, a home-based waste reduction and recycling business in Fayetteville, said a savvy entrepreneur can collect all or most of this information relatively easily.

“I have yet to find a business that’s not in the chamber (of commerce), that’s not in the Yellow Pages, that’s not googleable,” Stahl said Wednesday at a public input session organized by the Fayetteville Forward Economic Incentives Group, a volunteer organization, exploring how Fayetteville’s business climate can be improved. “Forcing everybody to do this is going to be a nightmare.”

Stahl and others at the meeting mostly took issue with the program’s cost to businesses. Home businesses such as his would pay $46 for the license if it’s submitted on paper and $39 if the business owner files it online. Others would be charged $64 a year for the paper application and $57 a year for the online filing, according to a draft of the proposal.

“One more $60 out of your pocket might prevent someone from launching a new endeavor,” Stahl said.

The business license proposal has been discussed — with numerous changes and revisions — by the Ordinance Review Committee. The City Council may consider it in the next month where the program is expected to get a healthy debate. The idea of a business registry program has been batted around for more than 10 years, said Don Marr, Fayetteville chief of staff, but never made it out of the ordinance committee. The proposal was relaunched about a year ago during Fayetteville’s economic development summit, when it received overwhelming support. Groups such as the Chamber of Commerce praised a system that would build a publicly accessible database of business types.

“You can’t go to a single place to find this data,” Marr said.

Fayetteville is also the only city in the state with more than 50,000 people to not have a business license program, said Karen Minkel, Fayetteville’s director of strategic planning and internal consulting.

One concern heard Wednesday was how accurate information collected would be, since it only gets collected once a year.

“I don’t see a great deal of benefit for the whole thing,” said Charlie Sego of Fayetteville, owner of the Duck Club Gallery.

Even with the reduced rates for home-based businesses because they would require less administrative costs, the discussion continued to come back to the license cost.

“Sixty bucks is not going to make or break most businesses,” Sego said. “But is this the straw? It may not be this one. But will it be the next one?”

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