NYC mayoral candidate Kathryn Garcia rolls out plan to cut red tape for small biz permits
Mayoral hopeful Kathryn Garcia appealed to pandemic-weary New York City small business owners Friday with a plan that aims to drastically streamline the city’s permitting processes and expand the city’s outdoor offerings.
Garcia, who served as Sanitation Commissioner under Mayor de Blasio, wants to create a single “City Permit” for businesses with fewer than 100 employees to cut down on the “bureaucratic nonsense” she said they now face when trying to launch and maintain themselves.
“Today, to open a restaurant in New York, you need to get permits, file applications, undergo reviews, get inspections and receive licenses from up to eight different agencies before you can sell a bowl of soup,” Garcia said. “To restart New York City’s local economy, we have to change and we have to change fast.”
Under Garcia’s plan, business owners would be able to apply for a single permit on their smartphones, and businesses that are renewing the permit would receive a response within one month of submitting an application.
Garcia, who spoke Thursday morning to the Association for a Better New York, also wants to grant local businesses an across-the-board waiver of fees and fines during her first year in office if she’s elected.
Over the past three months, she has focused much of her energy on appealing to outer-borough voters and has pitched herself to them as a competent manager who’s spent her career in public service.
Garcia doubled down on that Friday, sketching a picture of herself as someone who’d bring a blue-collar ethos to City Hall by working long hours and getting “sh-t done.”
“You can’t govern New York City with tweets, you can’t manage 335,000 city employees with a slogan. You don’t learn government at a corporate retreat, and you can’t show up to work two or three hours late, or not at all,” she said in an apparent dig at her chronically late former boss. “Being mayor is showing up to work early every day, treating New Yorkers like customers, and knowing that political platitudes don’t solve problems — hard work does.”
Her permitting proposal could provide considerable relief to middle-class business owners frustrated with the red tape associated with running a mom-and-pop store.
But her appeal has a much broader reach, according to Charlie O’Donnell, a partner with the Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, a venture capital firm, who said out-of-towners will no longer want to move to the Big Apple if so many businesses remain shuttered.
“Why would they do it today if nothing’s open?” he said. “That’s what makes the city fun and interesting and a great experience.”
Garcia has so far trailed in the polls — garnering just 2% of support in the most recent survey.
She also has not yet qualified for public matching funds, which would help jump-start her campaign. The next deadline to qualify matching funds is in mid-March.
Aside from her proposal to streamline business permitting, Garcia also said she intends to reform the permitting process for city concessions and public art in parks and wants to develop a partnership with streaming services to bring Broadway shows into people’s homes.
She said she would build on the success of the outdoor dining initiative de Blasio launched in response to the pandemic by letting restaurants and bars serve drinks outside in designated areas and by allowing businesses “to take over hundreds of thousands of square feet of public space in parks and plazas to add seating, grow sales and host shows and exhibitions.”
“We’ll get this done by reforming our concessions and public art permitting process,” she said. “I envision a city filled with art and music — a city where you turn the corner to happen upon a virtuoso violinist or a dance performance.”
