Economic Development
Issue discussion
We must create new businesses and jobs for everyone, those with college degrees and those with only a high school or associate degree. To bring new, leading edge businesses into the city we must train our young people to hold jobs in those businesses and reform our tax system. To provide jobs for people with a high school education or less we must invest in commercial corridors and provide support to new start-up businesses.
If we really want to create a city with a thriving economy that benefits everyone, we need to create three kinds of economic development.
- Bring new, leading edge businesses into the city Only by doing that will we be able to provide jobs for our many college graduates as well as people with associate and high school degrees. We must improve our schools to bring these businesses into the city. Leading edge businesses do not just hire people with a Ph. D. There are also looking for well trained employees with high schools or associate degrees. However Philadelphia public schools do not do a good enough job in training our young people for these jobs. In addition to improving our schools, we also have to reduce our business and wage taxes in a revenue neutral way in order to encourage businesses to locate here.
- Revive Our Commercial Corridors That is how we can provide jobs for Philadelphians with only a high school education or less, many of whom suffer today from under and unemployment. Philadelphians are spending hundreds of millions of dollars outside the city at retail business enterprises that can and should be found inside the city.
Reviving commercial corridors requires a holistic strategy that supports individual businesses while creating the communal conditions that enable them to thrive. We need an aggressive effort, lead by locally based Community Economic Development Corporations and supported by the city, to provide capital and expertise to new, locally owned businesses and to chain stores that promise to hire and promote employees from the community. At the same time, we have to draw upon state and local resources to improve streetscapes with new sidewalks and lighting, to clean commercial districts and keep them clean; to brand and advertise our commercial corridors, to create new parking areas where needed and to make transit improvements. We might, for example, provide a single fare that allows people to get on and off buses and trolleys in our commercial corridors as many times as they want each day. - Expand Our Port Imports are expected to double over the next ten years. The Port of New York port cannot expand much further. Philadelphia can capture much of the new imports on the East Coast provided that we dredge the Delaware in an environmentally responsible manner, expand the road network leading to the port, and protect the port from traffic problems created by new development on the Delaware River by creating a new public transit line on Columbus Boulevard.
