Allan Appel Photo
The restaurant owner and the candidate.
Juan Almonte is ready to expand his El Buen Gusto restaurant on Grand Avenue — if he can get some help expanding and putting a new sign.
He hopes Toni Harp can offer that help if she becomes New Haven’s next mayor.
That’s why the Democratic mayoral candidate showed up at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning on Grand Avenue at Maltby Place at the thriving Latino restaurant. Her mission: to unveil her seven-page, ten-point position paper on how her administration will put small businesses front and center should she be elected.
Click here for the full small-business position paper.
Its main points, some of which she has articulated before, include:
• Creating a one-stop shop at City Hall for all info, from city to to state to the feds to private sources, of all help available to small businesses and entrepreneurs.
• Creating a small-business incubator for women and minority-owned business, with legal, marketing, accounting, financial advice, including a micro-enterprise program for start-ups.
• Expanding the mission of the quasi-public Economic Development Corporation so that it gives as much focus to small business development as to large ones.
• Growing a green jobs economy, with particular focus on employing people in the pressing work of sewer separation infrastructure work
• Pressing to make sure financing and capital are more available to small businesses.
• Integrating ex-offenders back into society in part by helping them get hired by small businesses.
When the candidate arrived Tuesday morning, Almonte greeted her her in front of the long brick wall on the Maltby Place side of his building. High above he wants to put a new sign. He told her that he has heard of the facade grant program that city provides.
“I want to fix the front. I want to make it nice. A nice glass front, and I want to put it bigger,” Almonte said.
He added that every day two or three people come looking for work at El Buen Gusto. He tells them, “Sorry, wait until I expand.”
The problem with the facade program is that it’s not a true grant program, Harp said. Businesses first have to lay out the thousands for the new sign or facade. The city repays them after invoices are submitted.
“I’d make it easier for people, especially new businesses,” Harp said.
“I’d make it a real grant program. It’s not a grant program until the money is there,” she added.
Local limo company owner Antoine Scott (pictured), a city development commissioner, presided over the briefing. Almonte provided coffee and donuts hosting about 25 people who came out to hear the candidate.
Scott said that when he came out of the Air Force and wanted to launch a small limo company, he discovered state regulations in place that protected the large fleet owners and made it difficult for start-ups. He appealed to state Sen. Martin Looney, who was in attendance at the briefing Tuesday. Looney looked into the matter, and now Scott’s company is thriving.
“It’s important that we have a small business mayor,” Scott said.
Harp also said she does not think New Haven at present does a good job of monitoring contract compliance with companies doing business with the city and employing women and minority workers. Sustaining workers’ connection with construction and other industries is the key, not one-off jobs, she said.
“We abide by the law, but not necessarily the spirit of what we’re trying to accomplish,” she said.
“We’re going to say if the city has any skin in the game at all, then a certain portion [of jobs] has to be for New Haven Works,” she said.
Small businessman Juan Scott [not related to Antoine] was also on the committee of business folks who put the plan together with Harp. He called the plan detailed. one that “will require no more taxes. The resources are already there. Just needs someone to bring them together.”
Barbecued chicken was the special for lunch, not available for the news event.
Almonte, who currently lives in Chicopee, Mass., where his kids go to school, will not be able to vote in the upcoming election. He plans to move to New Haven soon.
And, he hopes, expand his business.
Mayoral candidate Justin Elicker responded to a recitation of Harp’s points later in the day: “We’ve already put out positions on minority business enterprises and better auditing [of city contracts] as part of the 75 Solutions initiative.” He said that was two weeks ago. Elicker said more economic development points are soon to be released on his website.
He went on to add: “I’ve been saying for months specifically that [the] economic development [department] needs to focus on small business and neighborhood support, and redirect some small business [hopefuls] from downtown to neighborhoods to increase investment, particularly to vacant properties.”
Elicker said specifically that he’s heard from business folks in Westville and Dixwell they feel they haven’t gotten much support.
“I want to underscore it’s really difficult to start a small business in New Haven because of the bureaucracy. What government needs to do is make it easier. [And the city] economic development [office] shouldn’t wait for people to come to it, it should reach out actively to people who want to support small business.”