San Francisco, as even casual observers of the political scene know, is one of the most liberal cities in the country. Many of its citizens fear big business — but not big government — and speak lovingly of locally owned small businesses. Its Mayor, Edwin M. Lee, recently announced a $1.5-million fund to assist small businesses. Despite their professed love of the small and local, however, the leftists in charge of the City by the Bay have made it next to impossible for anyone to start a small business in that town. Just ask Juliet Pries.
In January Pries opened the Ice Cream Bar, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. But before she could start serving up hot fudge sundaes and banana splits, she was forced to spend two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars — supplied by family and friends — navigating the city’s labyrinthine planning codes and otherwise satisfying the bureaucrats’ whims.
For example, writes the New York Times: “Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.”
“Even after she acceded to all the city’s demands,” the paper adds, “her paperwork sat unprocessed for months.” All this time “she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open.”
“It’s just a huge risk,” she told the Times. “At several points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.”
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