As small business owners in Redmond, who are the heart of our community, the undersigned are opposed to an increase in the business license fee for our larger employers and recommend you take the time to gain further input and explore alternative options.

We recognize the issues faced by City and we understand that this new fee is intended for the support of our Redmond small businesses. We greatly appreciate all the City of Redmond has already done and continues to do to in support of our organizations through the recent grants and other programming. However, we are concerned with the message this sends to our larger employers and the business community as a whole.

Many of our small businesses value our larger employers and factor business from their employees into our overall business models. This is a time where we should be supporting all businesses, big and small. What would help us the most, is to have the larger employers get their employees back to work as quickly as possible.

With our community’s deep roots in technology, it is concerning to us that the tech business models are evolving and changing. Many employers have offered permanent work-from-home options. As you may be aware, other regions across the U.S. are also actively working to recruit Redmond employees to work from home in their cities and states. A new fee or tax targeted at larger employers would likely reduce the number of employees that work in the City of Redmond, and therefore reduce the number of customers that will come to our small businesses.

Seeing the effects of the new head tax in Seattle which led to employers leaving in droves, we don’t want to see that in Redmond. We don’t want to significantly impact the good reputation that Redmond has as a great place to do business. As Seattle-based companies look to the Eastside to move from high-tax Seattle, we need to ensure that Redmond maintains our competitive edge.

We request the Mayor and the Members of City Council to not implement such a tax on our larger employers, but rather reach out to the business community for input. Let’s all work together to create a plan that works for everyone.