2006/10/31
Making it easier to do business here
I may have been harping on this just a bit lately, but it's really not easy to do business in the city of Syracuse.
Well, there's now a task force to help make it easier for developers to get things running in town.
The task force – which includes actual humans trying to do business here – is out to cut down paperwork, and help prospective developers give investors timelines they can stick to.
Hopefully, this task force will not just include people who hope to drop hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars here. In casual discussions over the past couple of years with a former small business owner in Syracuse, I've learned that one of the biggest obstacles to doing business here is the lack of direction the owner got – no one was able to just hand the owner a list of required permits, licenses and inspections.
And when someone walks into a small business and says, "By the way, you need to spend $5,000 on X," it's a lot more difficult for someone with a $50,000 small business loan to conjure up another five grand than it is for someone dropping a couple of million on new development.
The most frustrating part of this equation, though, has to be Mayor Matt Driscoll, a former business owner in the city who has been in office for five years now and has had ample opportunity to step up and improve the process. Proof of his own inaction comes in a quote at the very bottom of the P-S story:
Well, there's now a task force to help make it easier for developers to get things running in town.
The task force – which includes actual humans trying to do business here – is out to cut down paperwork, and help prospective developers give investors timelines they can stick to.
Hopefully, this task force will not just include people who hope to drop hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars here. In casual discussions over the past couple of years with a former small business owner in Syracuse, I've learned that one of the biggest obstacles to doing business here is the lack of direction the owner got – no one was able to just hand the owner a list of required permits, licenses and inspections.
And when someone walks into a small business and says, "By the way, you need to spend $5,000 on X," it's a lot more difficult for someone with a $50,000 small business loan to conjure up another five grand than it is for someone dropping a couple of million on new development.
The most frustrating part of this equation, though, has to be Mayor Matt Driscoll, a former business owner in the city who has been in office for five years now and has had ample opportunity to step up and improve the process. Proof of his own inaction comes in a quote at the very bottom of the P-S story:
"I've been through it (as a businessman) and it is very, very painful," he said. "Every person in City Hall really needs to develop a customer service mentality. After all, they are being paid by the taxpayers. If a city worker is telling a developer about a code that has to be met, it needs to come along with the message 'we want you and we need you.' "Umm, yes it does. Now make it happen.
