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City Hears Concerns Of Local Small Business Owners

Greta Mart

At a meeting this week between the city manager and Unalaska and Dutch Harbor small business owners, roads, utility prices and the dearth of available retail space were named as key issues to those running a business on the island.

City Manager David Martinson says he understands how hard it is to operate a small business here because of high costs for pretty much everything.

"We're just trying find out where we can make adjustments on the city side to facilitate [operating a small business] while still being able to conduct business we need to conduct," Martinson said.

On Wednesday evening, Martinson gave an update on one issue - called sale-for-resale - raised at a similar gathering last October

"We working through a process to eliminate the need for business owners to come to the city to request sales tax that they paid on one item and sold that item," Martinson said. "I'll use...a restaurant who goes into Safeway, buys a hamburger and then pays the sales tax on that. Then they go into the restaurant and they make burgers and they sell burgers to their customers and they pay three percent sales tax - their customers do. Well, that business could actually come back to the city and ask for reimbursement of the three percent they paid to Safeway. It creates workload for the business owners, it makes workload for us in the city, so we're working on a process that we eliminate that need."

Randy Shinn, executive director of the Unalaska and Port of Dutch Harbor Convention and Visitor's Bureau, attended last night, along with about 20 local business owners.

"I had heard at the last small business meeting, there were some issues with when the cruise ships come in, the guests didn't know about some of these businesses. And so it's my aim to make sure that I give guests a business directory, the new maps we've created point out where all the businesses are," Shinn said. "So I was there to see what they needs were and help address them. And also to point out and remind them that we have ten ships coming through this summer - it is a viable option to try help market and the CVB could be the conduit."

Shinn says while the meeting was aimed at addressing topics particular to small business owners, the issues raised were problems encountered by anyone who lives and works on the island.

"In my opinion, it kind of turned into less of a small business meeting and more of a complaints about Unalaska; the two biggest issues that kept coming up were the cost of utilities here - and I see how that would affect small businesses as well - and the housing market issues," Shinn said.

"There were times when we probably went a little off focus from small business but that's not bad because what it did is it brought things into perspective," Martinson said. "We talked about utilities and trying to figure out cheaper ways to do utilities and alternative energy sources and why, while we will continue to look at those, the ultimate goal that we have in the city is to - whatever we do - is not drive an increase in rates overall."

Martinson says he thinks the meeting was successful overall.

"It's always good to get the community together in as much as helping me understand where things stand, but also getting the community to talk to each other. Whenever they get together there's always that opportunity where they can share ideas," Martinson said Thursday.

He says he plans to host another get together for small business owners later this year. 

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Greta Mart worked for KUCB in 2015 and 2016.