When Kansas City decided to make itself a more inviting place for small businesses, it went directly to the experts—the men and women running small businesses.
The city’s Special Committee on Small Business, which formed about two years ago, held a series of listening sessions with local entrepreneurs and solicited ideas for making City Hall more efficient. Councilman Scott Taylor leads the committee, which has won notice from other cities and even the White House.
Many of the entrepreneurs—some of whom had been in business for years—said they’d never really heard from city government before, said Mayor Pro Tem Cindy Circo, who sits on the committee.
As a result of those listening sessions, the city has implemented 62 of 67 ideas suggested by the committee—a 93 percent completion rate.
One of the most significant moves saw the city putting up funds for a microloan program administered by the nonprofit Justine Petersen. Smaller companies, which might have a hard time securing traditional bank financing, can apply for loans between $500 and $50,000.
Other improvements include faster payments to city contractors, increased monitoring of MBE/WBE and prevailing wage requirements, a Spanish-language version of KC Bizcare’s resource guide and a “secret shopper” program to make sure city staffers are doing a good job of customer service.
“Our citizens are customers, our businesses are customers, and we need to be listening to our customers,” Circo said.
