New York City has many small businesses, but a business expert says city government often hasn’t a clue about their problems.
According to Thomas Grech, executive director of the Queens County Chamber of Commerce, “The city doesn’t get the challenges of small businesses, such as paying a minimum $15-an-hour wage. It just thinks of small businesses as something to tax.”
The problem, Grech added, is that most city officials have never run a business and have no understanding of how it works.
“They don’t know what it’s like to meet a payroll and how to pay exorbitant medical costs.” He lamented that small businesses don’t have the lobbying power to organize.
Dr. Nabil Salib, a doctor who recently established the myDoc Urgent Care Center in Forest Hills, said that “lower taxes and rents” are needed. The city, he added, should also promote low-interest business loans.
The casualties keep coming. Metropolitan Pharmacy, a Queens stalwart, is closing its doors for good Monday after 40 years. Its owner, Ira Lisogorsky, blames regulatory and city policies, among other factors. Metropolitan’s demise comes about a year after the death of another popular Queens small business, Ben’s Best, a 73-year-old kosher deli in Rego Park.
Read the rest at: NewYorkPost