New parking meters in Royal Oak, Hamtramck aim to ease stress and boost business
New parking meters in towns near Detroit aim to keep abusers from parking past maximum limits but help those who paid in good faith avoid tickets.
Bill Laitner, Detroit Free Press
- Detroit City Council amended an ordinance to change regulations for obtaining a business license.
- Changes include extending the term of a license from one to two years and consolidating two licenses for restaurants into one.
- New changes may result in a negative fiscal impact on the city’s buildings, safety engineering and environmental department, which handles business licenses.
- Officials expect other revenues to offset losses.
Detroit business owners will undergo a less tedious route to obtain a business license, thanks to an amended ordinance City Council passed on Tuesday.
Business owners have grown used to renewing their licenses every year. However, changes include extending the license term from one to two years and consolidating two licenses required for restaurants into one. Restaurant owners were initially required to obtain a business license on top of acquiring a state license they would receive through the health department, according to Hassan Beydoun, group executive of economic development. Changes also include technological improvements and opening up a concierge team to help business owners navigate the permitting process.
“The city has an overly complex and burdensome web of laws and regulations that are far from intuitive to navigate,” Beydoun said. Small businesses “don’t have compliance teams, teams of lawyers, accountants and consultants to tell them how to navigate the city process. You essentially shut a lot of these people out.”
Councilmembers questioned whether it would have a fiscal impact on the city, which Budget Director Donnie Johnson said would negatively affect the buildings, safety engineering and environmental department due to the reduction of volume of licenses per year.
“However, we’re still going to maintain a baseline level of revenues that are going to pay for the operation of business licensing. So we’re not talking about an operational deficit. We will still be collecting more than enough revenue to do that. It’ll just be lower than what we’ve been collecting to date. As business activity picks up and new businesses open, we expect that we’re going to start recouping this revenue. Even if some of that revenue isn’t via licensing fees, we are going to see it through income taxes, sales tax remittances from the state to us for this increased business activity,”
The department will retool its revenue forecasts to quantify how revenues will change in the coming years, Johnson added. City Council President Pro-Tem James Tate requested that the department provide reports to show an understanding of where it stands fiscally.
Currently, there are 2,400 business license holders in the city, according to Andie Taverna, deputy chief operating officer. Several officials added that changes could spur further business investment in the city, thus resulting in additional revenues.
“Businesses need other businesses to thrive. What we’re trying to do is bring more businesses around other businesses, because people need businesses. The residents need businesses, you need to get your groceries,” said Amanda Elias, deputy group executive of neighborhood economic development. “The goal of this team is to try to bring as much investment in a targeted area of the city as much as possible.”
Grace Keros, owner of American Coney Island, on Tuesday supported the changes.
“We all spoke,” Keros said, thanking city officials involved in the process. “Marcus von Kapff (chief operating officer), he saw what a disaster it was of renewing a business license, let alone opening up a new one. … Let’s make it easier to start a small business in Detroit.”
Another individual, who called in online during council’s public comment session, told council members the package would aid Detroit’s economy.
“It’s by far the most pro-business ordinance that I’ve seen in 19 years of doing business in the city of Detroit,” he said. “This is a very, very exciting time to see something that is going to help the economy and small business in Detroit.”
Changes come after an announcement Mayor Mike Duggan made alongside von Kapff and several of the supporting councilmembers — Council President Mary Sheffield and Members Coleman Young II and Fred Durhal III — in May to propose various changes holding back business owners from opening or running their establishments.
Dana Afana is the Detroit city hall reporter for the Free Press. Contact: [email protected]. Follow her: @DanaAfana.
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