Hermosa Beach Resident Proposes Increasing Business License Taxes

Hermosa Beach resident, Jim Lissner, has collected close to 700 signatures in a campaign to raise business license taxes for local nightspots. Lissner proposes raising the maximum cost for a restaurant/bar business license from $2,268 to over $100,000. Business license fees have not been raised in Hermosa Beach in more than 20 years.

Costly police service to protect local nightspots has diminished city funding. Lissner feels that by increasing business license taxes, the restaurant and bars will help contribute some of the money necessary to finance their protection.

“Some of Hermosa’s restaurants and bars have been making extraordinary and increasing demands on city services, while the city’s business license tax on the categories including the largest and most intensively developed restaurants and bars is a flat $2,268 annually,” Lissner said, as quoted by The Beach Reporter. “This initiative is to assure the viability of our city government by establishing a stable, reliable and adequate funding source.”

Lissner proposes raising taxes directly in line with the services nightspots provide. The size of the establishment, the amount of hours it is open and whether or not it serves alcohol should all be factors in the cost for the establishment’s business license.

Council members will analyze Lissner’s proposal and discuss their opinions at the June 14 council meeting.

The Hermosa Beach Business License Tax Review Committee has, at the same time, created its own plan for raising business license taxes. Their fee hikes are not as steep as the ones Lissner suggested.

Both Lissner’s initiative and the council’s recommended increases will appear on the November 2011 ballot. Voters will decide whether or not to allow increased licensing fees and by how much the licensing tax should go up.

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