I’ll admit it: I’d been procrastinating for almost two years. I knew writing for pay was a business, and I should probably be licensed by the city where I live. I even felt a little guilty about not having a proper business license and resolved, more than once, to act. But I never took the time to find out the details.
Fortunately for my conscience, the city of Napa has taken the initiative, engaging a Fresno company called Municipal Auditing Systems (MAS) to ferret out unlicensed operatives like your humble correspondent. The letter I received from MAS in May read, in part: “During a recent review for the City of Napa, you were identified as possibly operating in the City of Napa without a current business license tax certificate.”
Change “possibly” to “barely,” and that’s me, all right. It was actually kind of flattering that they noticed. So, of course, I dragged out the tax returns for 2006 and 2007, and by the time you read this column, I should be a fully licensed Napa Insider. As I write, it’s not clear how much it will cost me—and prospects are dim for passing the increase on to customers—but it’s the right thing to do. The city needs the revenue to keep providing the things that make me happy to live and work here. And considering that, without Napa, I’d have less to write about, I really should have taken care of this much sooner.
By the way, if you have a little home business in Napa, you can read the business-license section of the municipal code online at www.infomas.org/napa. It lists more than 450 types of business activities that require licensing—from acupressure to “wholesale-miscellaneous”—and while freelance writing isn’t among them, the section wraps up handily with “all other businesses, callings, trades and occupations providing a service or product.”
That just about covers the imaginable spectrum of legal commerce. So whatever you’re doing to turn a buck, you’re almost sure to owe part of that dollar to the city; and if you receive a fat envelope from Municipal Auditing Services, you might as well open it. According to city revenue supervisor V. Allen L. Isidro, “MAS is acting as an extension of city staff and operates under the rules of the city’s business tax ordinance.” And, in my case, as a much-needed boot in the rear.
“Stand and Deliver” Napa style
Maybe I’d be better at this financial stuff if I’d taken math more seriously as a kid. But apart from geometry, where you could solve things that sort of made sense, I never quite found my way in the numbers-and-symbols world. High-school classes were a drab affair. The best my teachers could do was to promise better things if I got through algebra, but “non-Euclidean” seemed vaguely negative to me. I achieved the bare minimum necessary to fulfill the requirement for graduation.
Math teachers have smartened up since then, and students can no longer crawl through two years of algebra and give up the way I did. Our economy demands math- and science-savvy college graduates, and these days, both the California State University and University of California systems require four years of college-prep math for admission.
This is dismal news for the kids who fall behind in eighth-grade algebra, whether because they have trouble grasping concepts, don’t understand the teacher or simply talk in class. When freshman fall rolls around, they’re placed in a basic class that doesn’t count toward the college requirement. To catch up, they’ll need to take two math classes in a single year—an almost impossible challenge that can, at worst, knock kids off the college track; at best, it means a year of post-graduate study at a junior college before they’re eligible to enter a four-year state school.
Steve Davidson, a first-year math teacher at Vintage High School in Napa, saw college potential in more than a dozen freshmen in his basic math class last fall. After Ds and Fs in eighth grade, these youngsters were pulling As and showing clear understanding of the concepts. By the end of the first term, these students had nearly caught up with their peers in the college-prep class—but not enough to transfer over.
Davidson convinced Vintage principal Eric Schmidt to OK a plan in which the promising students agreed to work extra time on the college-prep material outside of their regular math classes. The deal: If the students could cover the rest of the college-prep material and pass the exam in June, they’d get credit for the entire year and stay on the college track.
So three days a week, from January until the exam, 10 teenagers made their way to Davidson’s classroom at the almost unimaginable hour of 6:30 a.m. for 80-minute classes. It’s too soon to report on their test results, but these kids’ commitment is a good omen: More than half of them come from American Canyon, a long bus or car ride from Vintage, and Davidson reports that, of the 11 students he selected for the class, only one dropped out.
Davidson, a former public speaker and manager of medical practices, also teaches real-world skills to all the students in his classes. “We do a lot of real-life-issues stuff: how mortgages work, how interest works, car loans and budgets,” he says.
Can I audit your class, Mr. D.?
