Today, more than 3.5 million small businesses in the state of California – more than in any other state in the nation – account for 98 percent of all businesses.
That means, more than 6.5 million Californians and their families depend on a small business for their financial wellbeing.
The average small business in California has 5.8 employees, all of whom often wear many hats during the day to make ends meet – including sales, operations, human resources, finances, legal and more.
The list is endless.
Small businesses have fewer resources or employees to make our voices heard and less ability than larger companies to adapt to new fees, taxes and regulations.
As small business owners, when a problem arises, we can’t simply fix it by raising our prices.
A case in point: While a vast majority of Californians have access to safe drinking water, a Brown Administration budget trailer bill proposes to create a new tax on drinking water in order to increase water security in primarily rural, disadvantaged communities currently lacking safe water.
UCAN recently joined with more than 150 other businesses, chambers of commerce and water agencies to instead look to existing funding sources to address this dire need.
This same principal can certainly be applied in Sacramento.
Yes, every Californian absolutely deserves access to safe drinking water and with a little ingenuity and resourcefulness it can be done within our means and utilizing existing funding sources –not by implementing a water tax.