After opening my business nearly 10 years ago, I swore I wouldn’t open a hot dog stand in Escambia County. The hurdles to get my business open kept changing during the middle of the ballgame and I was losing employees before I could even get open because of all of the ridiculous little things the bureaucrats kept coming up with!
I overheard so many complaints down at the permitting office on Leonard St. from people who swore out loud – “They’ll just have to catch me because I’ll never try and get a permit for this again” – and others who said they would do business in Baldwin County from that day forward.
Two Baldwin county vendors I’ve tried to do business with told me they won’t because of the hassle from the bureaucrats in Escambia County. It is very shortsighted to think that is good because it protects Escambia County vendors.
The word is out about trying to open a new business in Pensacola area. No wonder the population is shrinking.
The people in New Orleans have learned the hard way that what creates population is entrepreneurs. In addition to being business friendly, the town has to have a quality of life where entrepreneurs want to raise their families. Pensacola desperately needs a strong mayor with vision and the ability to get the following done with a sense of urgency:
- Major improvements in traffic flow and synchronized traffic lights.
- Find ways to develop a lot of the waterfront areas with classy shops, restaurants and marinas. It’s a crying shame to see so much beautiful water and sand around with so little of it used to influence the atmosphere of retail areas.
- Use some common sense and get rid of the bureaucracy that gives us horrible looking corners like those at Palafox and Nine Mile Rd.,,,,,,and on both corners by Home Depot on Brent. There are probably many more but those come immediately to mind,,,,and they should embarrass everyone in the city but they are a great example of bureauracacy runamuck!!
Pensacola has been good to me and my family. I have lived all over the South and have never seen an area with more potential! It will take REAL strong leadership from a mayor who’s not worried about winning a popularity contest with all of the bureaucrats. The business community and people like you will have to loudly support this kind of mayor when the bureaucrats call for his/her head,,,which they surely will do if he does his job!
But it’s ours and our children’s livelihood and quality of life that hangs in the balance. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one footstep and yours (Outtakes, 11/23/06) was the first one I’ve seen so please keep up the good work!