Thanks in part to City Hall red tape, coffee-shop proprietor Dan Hogan says, it took him a year to add a drive-up window at pd bean on Cerrillos Road. Rob Day, owner of the Santa Fe Bar and Grill and the San Francisco Street Bar and Grill, says he can't believe how expensive it is to do business in Santa Fe.

Hogan, Day and other business owners related difficulties that their businesses have run into for a room full of sympathetic listeners at a Monday evening meeting of Friends of Capitalism. About 60 people attended the gathering at the Rio Chama Steakhouse.

Other speakers included Neal Frank, owner of Santa Fe Pens, and Carlo Lucero, president of Sparkle Maintenance, which is based in Albuquerque and does business there and in Santa Fe.

Josh Gonze, president of Friends of Capitalism, says it's a Santa Fe County citizen-advocacy group that supports free markets, limited government and low taxes.

The group, which he said has about 160 members, meets monthly to discuss how city, state and federal rules and regulations often hamper small-business owners.

"Normally something like this would fall under the purview of the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce or the Santa Fe Alliance," Gonze said of two local business organizations. "Neither of them are doing this. I suspect that's because it's politically controversial."

Gonze said he previously has invited Mayor David Coss and city councilors, but none of them has shown up yet.

Gonze told attendees at Monday's meeting that his organization was inspired in part by the fact that there was no grassroots opposition to the city's mandated minimum wage, which Jan. 1 will rise to $9.92 an hour, one of the highest wage floors in the country.

In his remarks, Day, a long-time opponent of the city's wage ordinance, said the measure "was not about what was good for Santa Fe. It was brought to Santa Fe from the outside ... as part of a political agenda."

Day also was critical of the cost of water, which he said has increased 32 times over what it used to be when he became a Santa Fe restaurateur.

Lucero said he spent most of Monday visiting his Santa Fe clients of his maintenance business to tell them he has to raise the fees he charges because the mandated minimum wage is going up.

He compared the business climate in Santa Fe to a bar fight, requiring quick responses to small conflicts that just won't go away.

For his part, Frank criticized city officials for taking so long to finish a renovation project on Guadalupe Street that he said resulted in losses for his pen shop and other businesses in the Sanbusco Market Center area.

When he asked workers why they had started the project three weeks before Christmas, the heart of the retail season, Frank said, "Their answer was, 'We didn't think about it.' "

Hogan said that his conversion of a former liquor store into a coffee shop involved the installation of three restrooms, even though he said city officials could never point out where in the building code that was required.

On top of that, Hogan said, his plan to add a drive-through window was rejected five times before it was finally approved.

Contact Bob Quick at 986-3011 or bobquick@sfnewmexican.com.