Cape Girardeau businesses may soon have a simplified process to obtaining a business license.
Currently, the city has 154 categories of businesses, and each category has a different license fee that ranges from $5-$300.
Assistant city manager Heather Brooks says none of the current fees are based on how big the business is or much gross revenue they have.
“You may have a business that has a ten dollar fee and then for every type of chair, if it’s a barber shop, may be an additional seven dollars. A mobile home park might be a flat fee plus ten dollars for every lot that they have,” Brooks said.
Brooks says the system makes it challenging to cross-train office staff, which impedes good customer service.
“It also prevents us from putting it online and letting people just fill out an application online and submit it electronically. There’s times that there’s just a small difference between one category and another or the type of fee that they might have to pay,” Brooks said. “It’s more complicated that we feel it really needs to be.”
Brooks says she will look at eliminating all categories and going to a single fee for business licenses, somewhere between $25 and $40 per year.
At Monday’s city council study session, the council recommended Brooks to set a fee based on how much it costs for staff to conduct the business license work.
She hopes to present a new recommendation to city council at the next study session on May 20.