SEAL BEACH : Business Advisory Panel to Be Created
The City Council has voted to create a business advisory committee in an effort to increase sales-tax revenue.
The committee, proposed by the local Chamber of Commerce, will replace Mayor Edna Wilson’s defunct “ad hoc committee on retailing.”
In a letter to the council, the chamber asked that the 11-member committee be allowed to collect $50 a year from business license holders to fund a “quantitative marketing report” that would include census and traffic information, as well as surveys of Seal Beach customers and business owners.
“If you don’t pay the fee, you don’t get your business license,” said Councilwoman Marilyn Bruce Hastings, who objected to a mandatory fee on local businesses. “How many businessmen on Main Street are in the Chamber of Commerce?”
Hastings said that 126 of Seal Beach’s 753 businesses responded to a recent chamber survey, and 30% of the respondents were chamber members.
Councilwoman Gwen Forsythe said she was “dissatisfied with the survey,” but would support the fee if a city-backed survey revealed local business support for the plan.
Councilman Frank Laszlo also said he would support the plan if it can be proved that “retail businesses are in favor of their plan.”
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