It’s Time

I’m honored and proud to be a part of our Mayor’s Economic Recovery Task Force on how to reopen our local economy and supporting business owners and employees. I promise to be a strong voice for Lincoln’s business community on the task force. As I have prepared for these meetings and have been doing my research, talking with business owners across sectors throughout our community, a recurring theme has come to mind for me: It’s time!

It’s time to get back to business! Over the course of the past several weeks, this is a constant theme among business owners in Lincoln. Business owners are begging to open the economy back up. As the local trends for positive cases of COVID-19 continue to decrease and more and more people are out and about in our community, it’s time for us to get back to business and open up our community.

It’s time to allow business owners to open and decide how to be open to serve their customers. It’s time to give business owners guidelines and allow them to choose their direction. Some businesses have not missed a beat in the last few months, their customer base has been strong, revenues have been constant (and in some cases increased significantly), and employees were able to continue to work without interruption. Small business owners are getting devastated by the restrictions and slowing of the economy. Business after business in Lincoln reports reductions in revenue and sales from 50% to 90%. These are the local businesses who step up to support youth sports and activities. These local businesses support our local charities. These are the local businesses creating jobs and employing our friends and neighbors. These local businesses are the backbone of our community. It’s time to get the businesses open again!

In many sectors, businesses were forced to close without warning—revenues were decimated, employees lost jobs, and they were forced to sit back watching other businesses thrive while their livelihoods were in jeopardy. As the phase-in approach started, some businesses were allowed to open with heavy restrictions while others were forced to remain shut down. This seems inherently unfair. It’s time to share guidelines for business to follow and let the business decide—do they want to be open at full capacity or do they want to be open at reduced capacity. It’s time for the business owners to have the choice how their business will be open!

It’s time to let the consumers decide where, when, and how they want to shop. After allowing businesses to choose how they want to be opened, consumers are then allowed to make their choices on where they want to shop, eat, and spend their money. This is no different than the choices we had as consumers prior to COVID-19. We knew businesses, we knew how they operated, we knew the guidelines for when we shopped there, and we CHOSE where we decided to go based on the businesses. With continued reductions in positive cases for COVID-19, we must move forward with our economy, open businesses, and allow the market to determine success. It’s time to allow the consumer to decide where they spend their hard-earned money. It should not be up to the government to decide what and where consumers can shop for products and services that are in all other times legal.

It’s time for us to come together as a community. During this pandemic, we have experienced several divisions within our community. It’s time to come together and help our community rebound from this pandemic. Lincoln is a wonderful community. We are a strong community. We have vibrant business and industry in Lincoln. It’s time for business to open. It’s time to move forward. It’s time for consumers to decide where they want to spend. It’s time to come together as a community.

It’s time!

LIBA studies and promotes these types of issues that are important to businesses and our community.  If you have an interest in joining LIBA, please call me at (402) 466-3419. LIBA membership is not restricted to just businesses.  We also have “individual” memberships for those who want to help influence our local government decisions.

For more information on LIBA, visit Liba.org.