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Show City Hound! Hears Vigorous Merchants Protest minutes of past years showed show-ed Pressure Vessels had never been granted either a business license or a conditional con-ditional use permit. Mary Lehmer, who originally orig-inally brought the matter to the Planning Commission's attention, moved that the Council meet with the Commission Com-mission to discuss the matter. mat-ter. However, her motion was greeted with manifest apathy and was not even seconded. sec-onded. The Council will wait until the end of the 60-day grace period it gave Pressure Vessels Ves-sels to improve its premises before making a final decision. de-cision. Mayor Price said at the meeting that anyone wishing to apply for one of the two open positions on the Planning Plan-ning Commission should write a letter to the city stating their reasons why they want the job. A final decision will be made at the next Council meeting after applicants are interviewed in executive session. Price said six people had already applied for the positions. posi-tions. The Council granted business busi-ness licenses to Fredrick Becker and William Coleman of Treasure Mountain Village, Vil-lage, to Dolly Crooks of Dolly's for her new store, and the Prospector Square Development Company. The public is encouraged to attend the special open meeting this Thursday in the Memorial Building. : U : ! f ; I If ' HI : i -i f . 1 i. ; : I H ; M " ft s ' , - , ;' J . f t 4 S .,, -..y? . - 'S. "zL - " "" ")$t . 1 . Members of the Park City Council heard vigorous protests to a proposed propos-ed change in business license taxes at their regular session last week. From left, Richard Martinez, Leon Uriarte, Mayor John Price, Jan Wilk-ing Wilk-ing and Wayne Mathews, City Manager. Victor Buck's original letter let-ter to the Council did not, according to Strand's letter, reflect the true sentiment of the Commission. While Buck had said the Commission wanted Pressure Vessels to comply with the conditions of its conditional use permit, Strand said the Commission in fact decided they wanted the business shut down. Secondly, a review of the equitable to all. City Attorney Carl Nem-elka Nem-elka welcomed his suggestion sugges-tion and said he would meet with the merchants as soon as possible. Nemelka said he had never had one piece of input from merchants about a fair way to arrange business license fees. The matter will be further discussed in the special public pub-lic meeting to be held next Thursday night in the Memorial Mem-orial Building. In other business, the Council decided to take no action on a letter from Planning Plan-ning Commission Chairman John Strand concerning Pressure Vessels, Inc. Strand said he was writing the Council for two reasons. First, former Chairman Merchants argued vigorously vig-orously against proposed new business license fees at the City Council meeting Thursday, Sept. 5. The Council made no decision de-cision on the new license fees, but if the sentiment of merchants at the meeting was any indication, any decision de-cision that is eventually made will certainly be controversial. con-troversial. The new fees, as proposed, call for a minimum of $50, with an additional $25 for every $10,000 additional gross receipts. Merchants had other complaints com-plaints about the proposal aside from the fact they thought the fees were too high. George Polychronis of Mt. Air Market pointed out that his business operates on a very large turnover and a low profit margin about 110 of 1 on an expected $1 million in receipts. He argued that fees bas ed on gross receipts were unfair to his type of business. busi-ness. Bill Mawhinney of Maw-hinney Maw-hinney Motors gave perhaps the strongest statement on the part of the merchants when he said, "You're going to run us out of business." Mawhinney pointed out that in his business, a customer is willing to travel some distance to get the best buy, and argued that the new fees would prevent him from being be-ing competitive with Salt Lake dealers. When Mayor Price argued that cities like Aspen charge even greater business license li-cense fees, Pricilla Willard retorted that Aspen also provides pro-vides its merchants with greater services. Matt Alverez proposed the merchants form a group to analyze the business license situation and recommend a fee structure that would be |