Letters to the Editor - 03 2010 Hard times made worse - Hard times made worse

Small businesses are often held up by elected office holders as the amenities that keep our neighborhoods and communities viable. People who choose to live in the City often want to be near small businesses that they can walk to or that are a short distance from their homes. The neighborhood commercial nodes make Minneapolis one of the finest cities in the country.

My husband and I own Papa's Restaurant and Deli, a 38 seat restaurant in the Victory neighborhood. It is well documented that it took two years for us to open our business, in part because of the difficulty in working through the City process at that time. Papa's, open for nearly five years now, is facing perhaps the most difficult times with credit pressures, a community hard hit by foreclosure, and a struggle to bring in customers. We are not alone in this situation as we have watched many restaurants close and retail space stay vacant.

Today, in the midst of a great recession, the viability of small, neighborhood restaurants throughout the City have an additional pressure coming from the policy makers who espouse the values of small businesses.

Recently we had the hood over our cook area cleaned. The cost of cleaning the hood is $289. When presented with the bill for hood cleaning there was an additional $130 "fire permit fee" added to the bill. To get a permit to clean the hood the cleaning company had to get a fire permit from the City. The total bill was $419 - 31 percent of the cost of cleaning of the hood is now going to the City of Minneapolis! The $130 fee multiplied by approximately 1500 commercial exhaust hoods will bring $195,000 to the City's fire department based on "annual inspections."

While this may seem insignificant to policy makers at City Hall, it is quite a large sum for our small business. Just to cover all the "fees" we pay to the City we have to have an additional 307 customers!

We believe we play a vital role in the safety, stability and livability of the Victory neighborhood, the Camden Community and North Minneapolis. Sadly, this most recent fee is just one more reason that businesses like ours are closing their doors.

Kris Brogan