By GAGE WILSON
For Glasgow News 1
The newest members of the Cave City City Council were sworn in Monday, then the council participated in a Zoom call with HdL Companies.
Those two items on the agenda drew a larger than usual crowd to the regular monthly meeting. The presentation by HdL Companies, a California-based business services company that assists municipalities in the location and recovery of unpaid business license fees, occupied most of the discussion during the meeting.
HdL representative Bobby Monroe spoke to the council via Zoom due to a scheduling conflict.
“We have been in business for around 42 years, finding revenue and generating revenue through business license fees,” he said. Monroe also explained how the proposed partnership would work — that the businesses HdL would identify were not “brick-and-mortar” but rather wholesalers making financial transactions within city limits without proper licensing.
He said that these entities were primarily out of state companies. “A lot of these companies don’t know that they have to have a business license.”
Citing the company’s impact with Cave City’s neighbor, Monroe noted HdL’s recent success in Glasgow, “We found around $36,000 for them.”
Monroe went on to describe how its business model would work, should the council approve the collaboration.
“We’ll get a list of business licenses that you have right now and we’ll do all the calling, all the collecting every month, it is ‘performance-based’ so if we don’t perform then we don’t get paid.” Monroe said his company is paid once the accounts that they have identified are reconciled, but “the city gets paid first.” The city will then pay HdL in a “50-50” split.
As Monroe finished the presentation, he and Hatcher turned to the council for questions.The first of many came from councilman Brandon Wright. Many of Wright’s questions boiled down to the possible consequences of the enforcement of these fees, which Monroe described as “pennies on the dollar.” Wright shared his concerns through a story involving his business, which spans city and county lines. “We may make two calls a year to Smiths Grove, and we got a letter one day from Smiths Grove demanding we buy a business license and that we pay a percentage of our revenue for the entire year,” he recounted. “It just wasn’t happening, so we don’t go to Smiths Grove anymore.”
After his example he went on to explain that he would find it hard to believe that, should the city adopt this approach, that consumers may be at risk for higher prices due to companies slowing down or all together stopping business within the city.
Monroe defended his position stating that in his experience he was not aware of a situation like that occurring with HdL, “Once they find out that they owe it, they’re going to want to continue doing business in Cave City.”
Relying on his decades of experience, city attorney Bobby Richardson chimed into the discussion saying, “We have collected here for years, we used to call it a ‘unloading license’ and we changed it to an ‘occupational license’, I’m sure some businesses from New York may not, but the locals all do.”
Councilman Denny Doyle stated, “What we are wanting to make sure of is that the wholesaler and the retailer both pay taxes.”
Capping the discussion was a question from the public, asking what would stop a larger seller ceasing business with a smaller client due to HdL’s enforcements. “This has never happened, for a company to pull out of a business, because they are also doing business in every city and tow all around you guys and they’re paying it in every city, they’re just not paying it in Cave City yet, because they haven’t been identified.”
The council ultimately voted to table the proposed venture until the next meeting on Jan. 13.
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