Welcome to the official Site of the Newsstand Association of Philadelphia!
The Newsstand Association of Philadelphia (NAP) was formed by newsstand owners to provide solidarity and support for each other, while providing a much needed service for the general public and business community. About the NAP
By John Rocco | June 18, 2012 at 02:57 PM EDT | No Comments
The BEST Legislative Body In The Free World
(June 2012)
Former Mayor William Green once called Philadelphia City Council "the worst legislative body in the free world." But, by insisting that we only move forward with the necessary effort to make real estate taxation fair and accurate after we collectively have a chance to review the proposed new values, Council acted appropriately and praiseworthy. Once Council reviews the values, it can set a new tax rate and craft the necessary tax policies to protect vulnerable homeowners and ensure a reasonable transition from our current unfair and inaccurate system to an equitable and legitimate system.
Mayor Nutter and his finance flaks urged Councilmembers to set a new tax rate by formula before understanding how their constituents would be affected by the changes. But, as it became clear that they were being asked to fly blind without seeing the ACTUAL proposed values that put the "actual" in the Actual Value Initiative, Council balked. They listened to the advice offered by community activists, tax experts (and me) and insisted that they would only move forward after seeing and vetting the values.
Council also refused the Mayor's request to use the Actual Value Initiative to increase Real Estate Taxes by $94 million.
To be sure, Council's actions are not without issues. Council's revised plan would make permanent the "temporary" tax hikes of 2011 and 2012, which would have expired this coming year. You certainly heard it here first that those "temporary" tax hikes were here to stay. Council also plans to generate more money for the School District by burdening Philadelphia's already overburdened taxpayers with another $40 million tax hike split between the Real Estate tax and the Use and Occupancy tax. (The U & O Tax is essentially an additional tax on commercial real estate.) That's now five straight years with a tax increase, if you are scoring at home.
I am the father of public-school students so I have a direct interest (three direct interests) in our schools. But, I remain unconvinced that the additional school funding will create a positive difference in terms of increased educational attainment and safety for Philadelphia students. I also don't understand why this extra money helps as, even with this infusion of extra cash, the District is still counting on union concessions and an unwise borrowing of more than $200 M to make ends meet. Most important, I don't understand why we are not looking to Governor Corbett for more school funding (the governor appoints the majority of the members of the School Reform Commission that runs the District), or why we are not first collecting some of the more than $500 M in delinquent Real Estate Tax before asking more of overtaxed City property owners.
Still, considering that this Council moved wisely to head off what could have been a tax-policy disaster, this is an opportunity to dole out praise. Freshman Councilman Mark Squilla deserves our thanks for pushing relentlessly to slow this process down and insisting on looking before leaping. Councilman Bill Green is worthy of our thanks for doggedly mining the data and creating the information products that demonstrated how the "unknown unknowns" created too much uncertainty to move forward. Councilman Kenney deserves credit for his candor in assessing that Council was being asked to carry too heavy of a load in setting tax policy without understanding the ramifications of their actions. Finally, Council President Darrell Clarke must be lauded for building a majority consensus guided by what makes sense instead of what could have been politically expedient. Together, these council members -- and all those who made this action possible -- demonstrated sound judgment and responsiveness to their constituents.
With its action this week, Philadelphia's City Council earns kudos as the best legislative body in the free world. What? Too effusive? C'mon, they are competing with the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Congress. We at least know conclusively that City Council is no longer the worst.
By John Rocco | April 11, 2012 at 03:26 PM EDT | No Comments
The Newsstand Association would like to take this opportunity to welcome Bob Hill as a guest columnist.
"To Blog or Not to Blog"
We have now entered the world of blogs! Sounds kind of Harry Potterish, doesn’t it?
If you’re over 20 years old, you probably think this is some crazy sci-fi phenomenon, or I’ve simply lost my mind. Don’t fret, the vast majority of people don’t know what a blog is all about – and more importantly, why it matters to them.
If you’re under 20 you can stop reading because you probably know all about blogs, and the value they have in sharing information. You’ve been trading game-breaking codes, South Park clips, and jokes through blogs for months now – or maybe even years.
In a recent article, Johnson Ong quips "I have a blog. Doesn’t everyone? You mean you don’t? How uncool are you? According to Merriam-Webster, ‘blog’ was the word of the year last year. Not having your own blog is like not having your own Gmail account. What? You don’t have Gmail either? My God, what are you? A caveman!"
Over or under, cool or uncool, I want to address blogs from a business standpoint, and the tremendous value they can deliver to business. There are several reasons that developing a blog is a tremendous strategy for any business.
1) It will increase your web presence significantly – the search engines love blogs!
2) It will allow your business to educate customers and prospects about certain subjects, and appear as experts
3) It will raise your business profile with your vendors and other strategic partners, if they are invited to contribute to your blog
4) Other blogs can, and will, take information from your blog, and you will increase your exposure to anyone that participates in the ‘taking’ blog
5) Blogs accept subscribers, and everyone that subscribes to your blog will be constantly updated (pinged) by you with current information.
So What is It?
The full name for a blog is a weblog. It’s a repository for articles, newsletters, information, and discussion boards. It’s like a ‘what’s new’ page on the internet in whatever subject you choose. When people research any topics that you have on your blog, they may very well end up on your blog through their search. If you’ve done it right, your blog is of course, fully branded to your company, and linked to your main website.
If you keep current articles, and information on your blog, you will receive hits from people looking for information about those subjects. You will also receive hits from other blogs, and they will then distribute your information to their own audiences.
You will receive hits from contributors of articles or news items, as well as people looking for those particular contributors through a search engine.
Hopefully, you get the picture. Your web traffic should increase exponentially through the proper use of a blog.
Business Blogs
Business blogs have yet to sweep the business community, which presents a significant opportunity to adapt the technology to any business. It will allow you to share expertise and knowledge with a much larger audience, which should create a significant benefit.
There is specific blogging software, and you will have to learn how to create an effective and valuable blog. You will also have to learn how to acquire and produce current industry information to populate your blog with articles that will maintain interest and value. Yes, there is an element of work to it – you didn’t think it was free, with no effort required, like the mumps did you?
As you add current information to your subject area, or to secondary subject areas that you may include in your blog, your chances of more hits are higher.
If you continually contribute self-generated articles and news items to the appropriate subject areas, your chances also increase. In addition, there are sources that allow you to publish their materials, which can be used to increase the value of the blog, and therefore the likelihood of being found on the good old inter-web.
So How Does It Work?
If you still push the Pause/Break button in the upper right-hand corner of your keyboard to request permission from your boss for a visit to the bathroom, you can skip this part. Otherwise, it’s really not too hard to follow.
Without getting too technical, there are many web robots (bots), crawlers, and spiders, and similar technologies that have RSS Reader capability. That’s the stuff that is specific to blogs. They are basically looking for news, and blogs have that news.
If you do it right, these bots, crawlers, and spiders find your blog, and send information elsewhere, which is just what you want. Your blog is basically yelling at these web ‘beasts’ to "come on in and take this great stuff I’ve got."
For example, these web ‘animals’ include yahooslurp, googlebot, feedstercrawler, pubsub, syndic8, msnbot, newsgator, CP30, & R2D2.
O.K., the last two were Luke Skywalker’s buddies, but the rest are real.
It will take 4 to 6 weeks for the search engines to adjust rankings but the ultimate result will be that you will progress up the ladder in the engines in the various topic areas that you feature. When people are searching for technologies or subjects that are being discussed in your blog, they will find you on the search engines.
That should be a hint that you should have content on your blog about the subjects that are most often searched.
When a subject is searched that is covered by one of your branded, self-generated articles, your fully branded information may be pulled to another blog, or to a specific person doing a search in that topic area. You can post that same article on your website, and it won’t go anywhere. However, on your blog it gets a shot of super juice, and may just get pushed through any number of doors.
Linking – The Benefits – Increase Your Brand
When website owners and bloggers (yeah, I’m now a blogger!) think of linking, they are usually
referring to inbound links from external websites and blogs. For example, if you had a link to your website on the website of another business.
While adding more inbound links on external sites is important, there is also a sort of ‘reverse’ link strategy associated with blogs.
Your blog’s incoming links will provide another benefit when someone is referred to an article in your blog from another website. For example, through GooglePageRank, the receiving page (you) gets a boost up the search engine when that happens, which helps the blog overall by boosting the popularity of the blog, which in turn is what increases the search results, which in turn drives up the search engine rankings.
What!? I wrote it and I have to read it six times to really follow what I’m saying.
Basically, the more people that visit your blog when they come from other sources, the more likely it is for people to find you when searching for a whole myriad of topics. That type of benefit does not exist with normal website traffic, because those visits don’t effect web site rankings on the search engines. But blog traffic that is through a link from another site will drive you up the search engines. There – that’s much more clear!? As clear as fog in a low-lying bog. Ouch!
Web designer Sue Studios says; "Blogs are highly strategic, here-to-stay desktop tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Think of the potential for your e-newsletter strategies:
1) Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation
2) You can offer a bi-directional forum to customers to get true, personal opinion on your products and services
3) Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum, draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts."
Well, it’s snowing out so I think I’ll go blogging! Wait, is that something you do in the snow, or is it something you do to stay out of the snow?!
Or is it a Celtic dance? Or should the Steelers have blogged that kick to win? I'm confused.
By John Rocco | March 19, 2012 at 04:28 PM EDT | No Comments
Blog here.
March 19,2012
On November 3, 2011 City Council passed two bills that would effectively curtail and hopefully eliminate the business privilege tax as we know it in Philadelphia. One bill, by Councilman Bill Green and Councilwoman Quinones-Sanchez, will:
·Reduce the business privilege tax for small, city based businesses.
The other bill, introduced by Councilman Jim Kenney, will:
·Help new business grow and develop by eliminating start- up fees and exempting businesses from the business-privilege tax during the first two years.
The bills intend to reduce the tax burden on those new and small businesses inside Philadelphia county which have long paid more taxes then those located outside the city.
Most of Mr. Kenney’s bill will begin during the tax year 2012, but the Green/Quinones-Sanchez bill won’t take effect until tax year 2016.
The Nutter administration successfully argued that the Green/ Quinones legislation should be postponed… they believe it could cost the city as much as $33 million each year in lost tax revenue.
We believe the City Administration is forgetting one vitally important aspect to this argument
…it simply doesn’t take into account the potential for new growth in business and wage taxes.
Simply stated if you lower the taxes new businesses will come to Philly and the result will be more growth not less in business and wage taxes.
We believe new legislation should be submitted immediately that would move the Green / Quinones-Sanchez bill into effect now instead of waiting for 2016. This new initiative would truly signal that the City leadership is for real tax reform.
By John Rocco | September 23, 2011 at 04:55 PM EDT | No Comments
September 22, 2011
NAP begins a new chapter in its 18 year existence with the launch of ‘NAP Blog’. We hope to enlighten you about the Newsstand Association, its members and its positions on the many issues affecting us throughout the year. There are so many issues that we can discuss, from flash mobs to late night newsstand break-ins to our Holiday party in December. We wanted to choose for our first topic an issue that everyone in some way is affected when living in Philadelphia.
We chose for our initial Blog dialogue the dreaded Business Privilege Tax, a tax that affects all able bodied workers in the city. The name, Business Privilege over the years has evoked contempt and the tax itself has provoked contentious arguments.
The Newsstand Association of Philadelphia’s Steering Committee believes that we must reduce and eventually eliminate the Business Privilege Tax.
Let us be clear: If businesses do not occupy the buildings near or in front of our newsstands, there will be no foot traffic and without foot traffic our ability to conduct business will become nonexistent. We need more businesses relocating to Philadelphia. We need to attract new business to Philadelphia by gradually lowering and eventually eliminating this onerous tax. It is unconscionable for Philadelphia to tax both receipts and income.
In February 2005, 100 supporters of bill 040767 made the case to City Council that high taxes hold Philadelphia back and that tax reform can move Philadelphia forward. People from various businesses spoke of job lost and the high cost of doing business in the city. Speaker after speaker adamantly spoke out against the Business Privilege Tax and called for the adoption of bill 040767. That bill to gradually eliminate the BPT passed but was vetoed. Later legislation created a schedule to slowly reduce the BPT but after the economic downturn, the cuts were suspended. The Mayor says they will return in 2014.
NAP advocates a bill similar to 040767 to become law before 2014.How we get to that point depends on all of us coalescing together in one common goal to slowly reduce and eventually eliminate without reservation or hesitation this onerous tax.
As newsstand owners we must understand that because of this high tax on both receipts and income, businesses are leaving the city at an alarming rate. If this continues unabated, the foot traffic that we so vitally need to conduct business will slowly evaporate and our receipts and income will slowly disintegrate.
We suggest that we begin to show our solidarity and support by displaying a sign in our windows that express how we feel about this vital issue. NAP Steering Committee will forward a letter and send it to all city council members expressing support to eliminate the Business Privilege Tax. We urge everyone reading this Blog to respond with your suggestions how we might ignite our collective political activism and eliminate this tax.
Former Mayor William Green once called Philadelphia City Council "the worst legislative body in the free world." But, by insisting that we only move forward with the necessary effort to make real estate taxation fair and accurate after we collectively have a chance to review the proposed new values, Council acted appropriately and praiseworthy. Once Council reviews the values, it can set a new tax rate and craft the necessary tax policies to protect vulnerable homeowners and ensure a reasonable transition from our current unfair and inaccurate system to an equitable and legitimate system.
