General Permit Guidelines

All food establishments will be inspected at least once every six months, or according to a risk-based inspection process.  Restaurants that prepare-cool-reheat potentially hazardous foods will be inspected more frequently.  Establishments that sell only pre-packaged foods will, on average, be inspected less frequently.

Additional inspections may be required:

• Pre-inspection for New/Remodeled Food Establishments – Builders must submit copies of the plans for review and approval prior to building.   Building plans and actual facility are checked for kitchen design, handwashing and warewashing facilities, restrooms, plumbing, and other physical aspects of the establishment.
• Complaint Inspection – All complaints received by NDA are investigated.
• Follow-up Violation Inspection – Conducted if violations are found during a routine or complaint inspection that require additional correction.  If “critical violations” are found during any inspection, the Environmental Health Specialist will issue a compliance date that may range from immediately to a day or more.
• Foodborne Illness Investigation – Conducted if a foodborne illness is actually confirmed through medical or laboratory testing.

Besides the food establishment permit, other types of food permits include:

• Temporary Food Establishment:  selling foods for immediate consumption.
• Itinerant Food Vendor:  Selling foods prepackaged at a permitted facility, including fresh or frozen meat and poultry.
• Mobile Food Unit:  selling prepackaged items and foods requiring limited preparation in a vehicle-mounted food facility.
• Pushcart:  selling prepackaged items in a non self-propelled unit.

Requirements for Food Establishment Operations are listed with the Nebraska Department of Agriculture  and the Lancaster County/City Health Department.  Click for a copy of the Nebraska Food Code.

Besides permits for the facilities, you will also need permits for individual food handlers, now available online through the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health.

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Tax Holiday. Employers receive a tax Holiday for their portion of the FICA tax for certain workers hired after February 3, 2010 and before January 1, 2011.  An employer is excused from paying its share of the 6.2% of the first $106,800 of wages for the qualified employees during the calendar year.   The maximum value for each qualified employee is $6,621.   This tax Holiday does not include the Medicare Hospital Insurance contribution (1.45% on all wages), the federal unemployment or state unemployment taxes, and other state employment tax.

Qualified employees are defined as:

• Begins work after February 3, 2010 and before January 1, 2011 in either a full-time or part-time job.
• The individual was employed a total of 40 hours or less during the previous 60-day period ending when employment starts.  Individuals must complete an IRS form that affirms their previous unemployment.
• Was not hired to replace another employee unless the former employee separated from employment voluntarily or for cause.
• Is not related to the employer and does not own more than 50 percent of the business, either directly or indirectly

Business Credit. An employer can claim a tax credit if the employer retains a qualified worker hired under the HIRE Act for a minimum of 52 consecutive weeks. The credit is equal up to $1,000.  If the employee quits or is fired before the end of the one-year period, no credit is allowed.  To qualify for the full $1,000, the qualified employee must be paid more than $16,129.03.

To qualify, the retained worker:

• Is employed on any date during the tax year;
• Continues to be employed by the employer for a period of not less than 52 consecutive weeks; and
• Receives wages as defined in Code section 3401(a) for such employment during the last 26 weeks of the period that are at least 80% of the wages received during the first 26 weeks of the period.

The act excludes employees who are not normally subject to include tax withholdings such as household employees and some agricultural labor.

For a calendar tax year employer, this credit will be available for 2011. For any other fiscal tax year employer, the credit may be spread over two years, but cannot be used in a tax year beginning prior to the ACT. 

Consult with your tax adviser or accountant to determine if your business qualifies and whether it is advantageous for your business to hire additional employees.  Specific documentation rules and regulations do apply.

Source:  Littler Mendelson, PC.

Document:  HIRE Act Signed into Law – What is Means to Employers.

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In today’s economy, companies want to cut costs while maintaining current productivity levels with possibly fewer employees. That’s a tall task, but new technologies are allowing companies to create virtual, online working environments that are secure and easy to use while providing better performance and functionality than a traditional computing environment.

In a traditional computing environment, all employees physically come to an office to work on computers purchased, configured and managed by the company“s IT staff.

This computer management is a huge undertaking that“s necessary to keep data safe and computers running smoothly. Personalization and flexibility are sacrificed for security and performance.

The alternative is to deliver computing desktops and applications online to any computer – anywhere, anytime – that remain physically separate from an end user“s computer, transforming it into just an access point or terminal.

For more of this article, please visit http://www.expandomaha.com/2009/10/enabling-a-virtual-office/

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The Central Contractor Registration (CCR) system is a secured repository of vendor data used for governmentwide contracts. The preferred method for completing a registration is via the World Wide Web at www.ccr.gov. Businesses only need to register once. The information submitted will be accessible to all Federal agencies for conducting business.  The business owner has access to update the information whenever necessary. Annual renewal is required to remain active.

A CCR Handbook is available at www.ccr.gov to assist with registration. It provides detailed instructions on data needed prior to beginning the on-line registration, as well as steps to help with the registration process.

For additional help with government contracts, contact Andy Alexander, PTAC Program Manager/Counselor, Nebraska Business Development Center.  ph:  (402) 554-6253

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The licensed resources can provide timely financial data by sales or organizational structure within an industry sector, detailed GIS demographic and economic data for a geographical region, company market penetration by industry and geographical area, and detailed national industry reports with trends and projections.  Compare your own business performance to the industry.  Get a better look at the market and coming trends.  See how demographic and economic characteristics are forecast to change.

Contact Odee Ingersoll, Director, Nebraska Business Development Center, College of Business & Technology, University of Nebraska Kearney.  Phone:  308.865.8429

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Forms data is continually added and updated by agency partners.

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Visual Merchandizing

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Renewable-Energy-and-Economic-Potential

This article is from the Center for Rural Affairs’ October 2009 monthly newsletter. The authors are John Crabtree and Kim Preston.

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Angel Romero-Keister opened Cravings Café in Lyons, Nebraska, last year. Her husband and their son have health insurance, Angel does not. They could not afford the additional premiums to include her. A so-called “pre-existing condition” made purchasing coverage for Angel on the individual market virtually impossible. She has become a vocal advocate for reform. She has helped organize local and statewide events in Nebraska and has traveled with other small business owners to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress for strong health care reform legislation.

Likewise, Larry Harbour, an entrepreneur from Broken Bow, Nebraska, has spoken out for health care reform. Larry’s story was reported by National Public Radio’s Howard Berkes in June. Larry opened LB Custom Chrome and Detail to good success, but he knows the cost of individual health insurance for him and his wife – as much as $12,000 to $20,000 in annual premiums – is a serious economic threat to their business. But they also risk financial devastation if they remain uninsured. As Larry told Howard Berkes, “If anything were to happen to my wife and I, the business is sunk … . Every day, we wonder when it’s going to happen – if something’s going to happen, are we able to afford that?
Angel and Larry, like so many other self-employed rural Americans, have taken great financial risks to start their businesses in our rural communities. We hold them up as examples of rural America’s drive and entrepreneurial spirit, and rightly so. They have done what we asked of them. They’ve taken a leap of faith, staked a claim in their communities, and worked tirelessly to make good on that commitment.

If rural America mattered, we would not allow a dysfunctional health insurance system to kill off the entrepreneurial dreams of rural America’s family farmers, ranchers and Main Street business owners. And we would see broad agreement about what reform can and should do – starting with instilling competition in health insurance markets by creating a national health insurance exchange buttressed by a public health insurance plan.

That should be where our vision for health care reform begins, for Larry and Angel’s sake and for the future of rural America, which is so intertwined with their entrepreneurial dreams.

Contact: the article’s author, John Crabtree, Media Director at the Center for Rural Affairs, at johnc@cfra.org or 402.687.2103 x 1010. Find out more about the Center at their website, www.cfra.org.  This article is from the Center for Rural Affairs’ October 2009 monthly newsletter. You can sign up for the free newsletter at http://www.cfra.org.

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Banks are cutting back, but capital is still available for worthy companies that know where to look.”We have one of those mortgages that’s all over the news right now,” says Dave Tiller.That mortgage is an option adjustable rate mortgage, which allows borrowers to pay less than the interest that’s accumulating on the loan — so the amount of the loan grows over time. Back in 2005, when Tiller refinanced his house, such loans were the latest thing. Tiller figured that paying $1,100 a month on the mortgage and deferring $1,400 a month in interest would maximize the amount of cash he had to invest in Studeo Legal, the Peoria, Arizona, legal-document management and consulting firm he was launching.

Then came the credit crunch. His five-bedroom home, appraised at $390,000 when he refinanced, is now worth just $320,000 — $10,000 less than he owes. Meanwhile, his monthly payment has ballooned to $3,000, which is $1,000 more than it would have been if he had been paying interest all along. That means he has less to invest in his business, and, thanks to the credit crunch, virtually no other options for finding capital.

Funding has never been easy to come by for small-business owners. But the current crunch represents a rare confluence of factors that is making things especially painful. Mortgage lending has tightened, and that’s been rippling through all sources of credit. Banks and even angel investors are raising lending and investment standards. According to a survey recently released by the Federal Reserve Board, about 65 percent of banks reported tightening their lending to small businesses in July — compared with 50 percent in April. A survey released in July by Deloitte Financial Services found that 76 percent of those who applied for small-business financing found it harder to land loans than a year earlier.

Funding remains available, but entrepreneurs will have to be persistent. The search for capital will probably take a lot longer than it did a few years ago, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will not be quite so big. The pain is particularly acute for entrepreneurs who have a lot of personal debt. Because the credit identity of small-business owners often is the credit identity of their companies, personal financial stresses can hit their businesses hard — and vice versa. A bad personal credit score will make it harder to find a business loan, particularly in today’s risk-averse environment.

Borrowers need to explore all their options with their bankers, says Will Howle, chief operating officer for Wachovia’s retail and small-business bank. If your home is shrinking in value, don’t use it as collateral. Instead, try to get a business line of credit based on the assets or profitability of your company. If you have just landed a major contract, tell your banker about it, and explain what profits you are expecting from the deal and why. And tell him or her about any other financing you have found. Even if it’s just a small angel investment, that might help the bank make a decision in your favor, because it improves your debt-to-equity ratio. “Business owners should be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to the financing of their business,” Howle says.

You could also look beyond your bank for funds. State and municipal economic development programs sometimes have cash for growing companies. Brady Davis, CEO of Elements Health Plans, a health care consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon, used personal funds to launch his company, and last year he went looking for outside financing for the first time. Initially, several angels showed interest — but they quickly retreated when the economy turned south. “Investors are looking at risk very differently now,” Davis says.

So Davis went on the hunt. In April, he secured a $200,000 line of credit with a bank. But that wasn’t enough to pay for his plans to add staff and ramp up marketing. So he decided to pursue a $150,000 loan offered through the Portland Development Commission, an arm of the city of Portland. The first two years of the loan are interest free, and if he meets hiring and wage goals, the rate after that will be only 1 percent. “It’s free money,” says Davis. Well, maybe — the deal hasn’t closed yet. Meanwhile, Elements Health Plans’ revenue has doubled this year, to more than $2 million. That helped Davis finally attract an angel investor this summer who was drawn by Elements’ growth prospects and reassured by the fact that it was able to snare bank financing in a rough credit climate. “He’s glad he’s not the only one taking a risk,” Davis says.

Good companies are definitely making it through the tough times. But more credit surprises are in store. Entrepreneurs will need to stay nimble to keep debt ratios in line with steadily tightening loan standards. The line of credit you have today may not be there tomorrow.

Michael Diglio’s nearly evaporated. Diglio is president of American Facility Services, an Orlando facility maintenance firm with 50 employees. A couple of years ago, he got a line of credit through a national bank, using his house, which had been appraised at $650,000, as collateral. He tapped the line only three times and repaid within a month each time. But that didn’t stop the bank from shrinking the line in May, from $200,000 to $65,000, citing contracting home values in Florida. “I called my local banker, and they said they had no control over it,” says Diglio. Earlier this year, a local real estate agent pegged the value of Diglio’s house at about $595,000. “I understand that there’s a correction in the housing market — but not enough to reduce my line of credit to $65,000,” he says.

So he fought back. Diglio appealed to the bank by sending refuting documentation, including an assessment of home values in his neighborhood from the online real estate service Zillow.com and a letter from that same bank congratulating him on his excellent personal credit score. This summer, he checked again, and his line of credit had been restored.

But other entrepreneurs, including Studeo Legal’s Tiller, have not done so well. In late 2006, he signed a million- dollar contract, which allowed him to wipe out some $50,000 in credit card debt. But he has another $40,000 to go. And he is still struggling with his mortgage. Local bankers recently told Tiller that his best hope for refinancing was probably a Federal Housing Administration loan, given that the agency is reaching out to homeowners affected by the sub-prime crisis. Tiller is keeping track of all his debt on a spreadsheet labeled “Misery,” and once he’s done paying it off, he plans to print the document and burn it. But even with hindsight, he thinks he made the right decisions. “In retrospect,” Tiller says, “there’s no other way I could have pulled this off.”

Borrowers need to explore all their options with their bankers, says Will Howle, chief operating officer for Wachovia’s retail and small-business bank. If your home is shrinking in value, don’t use it as collateral. Instead, try to get a business line of credit based on the assets or profitability of your company. If you have just landed a major contract, tell your banker about it, and explain what profits you are expecting from the deal and why. And tell him or her about any other financing you have found. Even if it’s just a small angel investment, that might help the bank make a decision in your favor, because it improves your debt-to-equity ratio. “Business owners should be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to the financing of their business,” Howle says.

For the remainder of this article simply click on the author’s name.

By Joanne Cleaver |  Oct 1, 2008 Inc. Magazine

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