The Business License: An Effective Extension Tool and a Challenging Research Tool

Turfgrass production, ornamental horticulture, and landscape services directly contribute $4.0 billion in output, and indirectly contribute $3.8 billion to Georgia’s over $700 billion economy. Urban agriculture industries, as a group, were severely challenged by the statewide drought of 2007 and then by the national economic downturn in 2009. Many businesses closed while others consolidated.   Although the economy has improved in recent years, industry associations have not noted an increase in membership.  This project attempted to use business license information to 1) provide insight into the state of the industry, and 2) identify new businesses so that Extension and professional association resources can be extended to them.  Gwinnett County was selected as representative of the Metro Atlanta urban and suburban area, and open record requests were filed for unincorporated Gwinnett and the cities of Duluth, Lawrenceville, Snellville, Norcross, Buford, and Lilburn, which lie within the county. Businesses were identified using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) number.  Although data collected on business license applications was similar among the government entities, data supplied in response to the open record requests was not. Requests for data from Norcross, Lilburn, and Buford, yielded no response. Gwinnett County supplied initiation dates for each business, number of employees, and some financial information. Duluth, Lawrenceville, and Snellville provided little other than contact information. Other factors may confound compiling the data.  Unincorporated Gwinnett County removes non-tax payers after three years; however, no information was available on when non-tax payers were removed from city license lists. Attention was focused on information provided regarding the tree care industry to determine if a unified database with main contact person, mailing address, phone, and, e-mail could be created. A total of 47 tree care companies were located within Gwinnett County and through use of the Internet, 21 email addresses were identified.  It remains to be determined if the other businesses have failed or simply have no Internet presence.