My repeated suggestions to the Franklin Economic Development Commission to construct and steer incentives to small, locally-owned businesses -- indeed, to give any sort of overt, structured support to local businesses -- has fallen on deaf ears thus far.
Why make any out-of-the-ordinary effort to support local small businesses? A nice encapsulation appears on the New Rules Project website:
Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.
Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.
Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.
Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.
Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America's economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.
Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.
Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.
Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.
Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.
Monday's EDC meeting includes the following agenda item: "Discussion Concerning Possible Incentive Programs for Development."
Though the EDC has been ambivalent thus far to my calls to create an overt program of support for small- and locally-owned businesses, perhaps "peer pressure" from nearby municipalities will get their attention this time around.
Cudahy, Shorewood OK aid to businesses - JSOnline.
Cudahy has created a cash and loan program that would give up to $57,300 to businesses, and Shorewood has approved a loan and a grant to help a restaurant move into larger space.
Both actions, taken Tuesday by the Cudahy Common Council and the Shorewood Village Board, are aimed at boosting economic development.
will give up to $57,300 in cash and loans to each of five small businesses that open on Packard Ave. Among the incentives that would be offered to the retail businesses: loans of up to $25,000 at 2% interest; matching grants of up to $25,000 to build or improve a storefront façade; up to $10,000 in cash to buy out an existing business' current lease so that the business can move to Packard Ave. Shorewood approved loan of $102,500 at 2% and a $50,000 grant to help North Star American Bistro move across N. Oakland Ave.
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