Last September we aired a piece by Todd Oppenheimer on how hard it is for small business owners to get through the permitting process here in San Francisco.
A few of you called in with recommendations for other business owners to talk to, including Ted Loewenberg. He's the president of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association and he says small businesses owners face a Sisyphean task.
Loewenberg: I think that the next story in that series is how a city that professes to help and be supportive of small business has such a byzantine and arcane and expensive process for people to get into business can with a straight face say that they in fact support small businesses - they are very successful at killing them.
Loewenberg recommended that we talk with Juliet Pries, the owner of the Ice Cream Bar in Cole Valley, about the massive red tape she had to deal with to open her business.
