What an age we live in where we go through such effort and energy to squash the entrepreneurial spirit of a couple girls. We aren’t talking about drug dealers, stolen property or criminal activity. You are not trying to bring down the big company ruining the environment, these are kids selling fruits and veggies. Are they really making that much money or causing too much of an issue that the city wants to get involved? I think my neighbor who has a garage sale EVERY weekend is in more violation that these girls.

Photo:contra costa times

This reminds me of some other recent news from Florida where the evil city was doing the same thing to a six year old and a lemonade stand. The news got so much coverage that the city was the butt of jokes from all over.

A 6-year-old girl in sweltering Southwest Florida tries to make a little summer money by starting a lemonade stand. A crabby neighbor demands that the stand be licensed or shut down. Heavy-handed police officers force the child out of business.

Finally, stingy city officials cave to public pressure and grant the license – for free.

It looked like the city of Clayton was actually going to do the right thing and let these girls be. But now the great wizard of Oz is being reported as saying the city of Clayton acted illegally.

The mayor thinks his city’s Planning Commission overstepped its bounds — and maybe acted illegally — when it ruled that two young sisters can re-open their shuttered vegetable stand.

The stands closure by the city in June spawned a cacophony of regional and national media coverage, and prompted a packed commission chamber Tuesday night. There, residents asked why 11-year-old Katie and 3-year-old Sabrina Lewis weren’t allowed to run a homegrown veggie enterprise on their front sidewalk along Mitchell Canyon Road.

The commissioners decided Tuesday to rewrite Clayton’s outdated residential zoning regulations — which don’t allow garage sales or even lemonade stands in residential areas — to be more forgiving. And because that revision will take up to six months, commissioners decided the Lewis girls would get a special pass to run their stand until new rules are hammered out.

Really, are tax dollars being spent on this? Parents want their children to understand the value of money. Our government should want kids to be more financially responsible. Look at the economy, what would happen if kids never learned how to make a buck until they were in their late teens. Some of the greatest business people in America say they had lemonade stands or other childlike ventures when they were young. It helps mold kids into more responsible adults. Maybe we should make that illegal too.

Steve Mariotto heard about the issues in the area and sent me this old article on CNN.

“Almost everybody I ever met that was a successful entrepreneur started a business as a kid,” said Steve Mariotto, president and founder of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, “and lemonade stands are probably the most common business (for children) in the country.”

How about we spend our time and money on the things that really matter?

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