Sign On: Sustainable Business Network Hopes to Ease Restrictions

If you ever tried to hang a sign outside your business, you know you’d need more than hammer and nails.  Applications and approvals from three or four different City agencies may be a thing of the past if the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia’s recommendations are implemented by the City.   

A recent SBN report, Taking Care of Business, seeks to find solutions to problems of Philadelphia’s 93,000 small businesses which create 54% of the city’s jobs.   

After surveying local businesses and reviewing other communities’ solutions, the report identified these and other recommendations: 

1. Reduce the time, cost and confusion of obtaining approvals.
2. Simplify the tax compliance burden for small businesses.
3. Ensure laws do not unnecessarily harm small businesses.
4. Reform the inspection system to ensure it is fair, objective, and offers the right to a timely appeal.
5. Partner with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and nonprofit support organizations to increase financing to small businesses.
6. Encourage collaboration and increased accountability among small business support organizations.
7. Transfer vacant land and enforce tax foreclosure laws to provide land for new and expanding businesses.
8. Consolidate and modernize the City's procurement process to increase small business participation.
9. Improve communication between government and small businesses.

The report’s recommendations overlap with the challenges identified by members of PACDC’s Commercial Corridor Working Group, which is working to strengthen supports for small businesses as part of a commercial corridor revitalization strategy.  PACDC will continue to advance its commercial corridor agenda and priorities in 2012 and collaborate with SBN.