Politicians Need To Do More for Mom & Pop Shops
While the pandemic has been going on for ten weeks, the politicians and their staff are working from home.
It’s sad to see Senator Gounardes post a link to a form to get contact information from the business owners THIS WEEK. Why hasn’t Gounardes used the past few weeks to work with business owners on re-opening plans? While Gounardes doesn’t control the dates that they can re-open, he can make sure that the re-opening is well-publicized and that people can properly social distance.
Instead they get an advisory, which must make business owners so annoyed.
I attended a webinar that Senator Gounardes and Councilman Brannan gave for business owners. I wanted to see if they were really helping or were they making it look like they were helping. It wasn’t good.
Their webinar had several people who came to repeat website addresses that everyone already knew.
I’ve seen other virtual meetings that Andrew Gounardes has held and they were in a completely different format and allowed for viewer interaction and question and answer.
There was very little new information and if I was a business owner, I would have felt completely discouraged. I don’t think the politicians understand that Bay Ridge businesses missed three big profitable holidays during the pandemic – St. Patty’s Day, Easter and Mother’s Day. Their sales are probably down by 60-70% what they made last year at the same time. They will need help to recover as they were forced to be closed.
The business owners aren’t Gounardes’ base so I guess he wasn’t willing to give them too much time. Our merchants were not able to ask any questions of the politicians. Creepily, as soon as the hour was up, Brannan shut down the meeting the way that Dan Donovan used to shut down meetings at the exact minute it was supposed to end.
Senator Gounardes marched in a Black Lives Matter Protest. As you can see, Gounardes is not social distancing from the Archbishop or other protesters.
Last week, Gounardes didn’t mention, The Bay Ridge Boost on social media and there were no pictures of him on the Avenue helping or promoting social distancing. When politicians says they are supporting local businesses – it may just be what we want to hear.
Today on Twitter, Councilman Brannan posted ideas for small businesses (see here). As we have seen in the past with property taxes, Coucilman Brannan likes to write in the newspapers and on social media about different topics, but he doesn’t write the legislation to make things happen. We have seen Brannan write some strange legislation that we can’t help but wonder who is it benefiting from it?
Maybe in a few weeks we will see a bill to help Mom and Pop stores survive this difficult time.
Hugs,
marlene
Topics: Bay Ridge | 1 Comment »
June 10th, 2020 at 10:24 pm
They have done NOTHING for renters! Even senior citizens!