I serve on the Board of the Rescue Mission of Trenton and see the great work they do firsthand.
The Rescue Mission has a unique opportunity in the next few weeks through the Times Holiday Appeal. They can earn matching grants of up to $40,000 through Hutchinson Industries and a few other corporations. A donation in ANY amount helps them reach that. The actual donor form info is below (no online available for this).
Thanks for listening and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Karla Pollack
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As NJ business owners and residents, Paula & I strongly support Governor Chris Christie’s property tax reform measures. We believe our legislators should put partisan politics in order to pass the property tax reform tool kit before time runs out. This will help spur economic development and private sector job growth in New Jersey. We hope you consider joining us in contacting your legislators this week! Karla Pollack
The state has enacted a 2% cap, effective January 1, 2011, on the amount a school board or municipality can raise property taxes each year, but if the Legislature does not give local governments the tools they need to cut spending and control costs, the property tax cap may not work.
Governor Chris Christie has proposed 33 specific property tax reforms that will help local governments control spending, but the Legislature has not acted on most of them. Christie calls it his “tool kit” for reforming property taxes.
Please contact your legislators and urge them to support Governor Chris Christie’s property tax reform tool kit before the end of the year.
Contact your Legislators through NJBIA’s Grassroots Action Center
Legislators have a small window of time to enact these reforms necessary to limit increases in our property taxes to 2% .
Star-Ledger
By Philip Kirschner
High property taxes are not only a burden for New Jersey homeowners, but a major cost for businesses as well — a burden that hurts the economy and costs us jobs. Employers pay New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes, too, and limiting these taxes would go a long way to getting New Jersey’s economy going again.
That’s why the business community is eager to see the Legislature enact Gov. Chris Christie’s “tool kit” to give local governments the implements to control costs that drive up property taxes.
Businesses that create jobs in New Jersey have to pay ever-increasing property taxes (if they own their property) or higher rent because of the landlord’s property tax bill.
Businesses also lose out on attracting and keeping talented employees who do not want to or can’t live here because of the tremendous property tax burden.
In NJBIA’s annual Business Outlook Survey, participating businesses have cited property taxes as being one of the three most difficult problems in New Jersey — every year since 1987. In fact, 40 percent of all of the taxes that businesses pay go to property taxes. A recent Ernst and Young study reveals that New Jersey businesses paid $8.3 billion in property taxes in 2009. This is a big factor behind the high costs that have discouraged business investment and job creation in this state.
New Jersey’s property taxes discourage businesses from investing and creating jobs here. Every time a business builds or expands a facility, its property tax bills go up — even though this investment creates jobs and directly benefits the state and local economy.
That’s why businesses cheered when Christie and the Legislature agreed this year to cap property taxes at 2 percent annually. Now, the state must give local governments the tools they need to stay within the 2 percent cap and still operate effectively. This means enacting the reforms in Christie’s proposed tool kit.
Thus far, in Part 1, we’ve scoped out the concept of blogging. Then from there we progressed to Part 2 and hit a couple of the benefit highlights. So far so good, right?
“Actually, I’m still on the bubble. Are there any other benefits?”
Yes, there are. The most significant additional benefit is SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization. If you like, you can read the Wikipedia definition of SEO here. In a nut shell, SEO is anything you do to make your site more findable. The idea is simple. With more content – presumably relevant to your company, niche and/or target market – there are naturally more opportunities for search engines to connect you with someone doing a search. Without such content, there is zero opportunity for that match to be made.
In addition, a blog also enables you with a means for your site not to get stale. All things being equal, Google’s algorithm is going to recommend a site that appears to be more current and more active. Google is just like you and I. Who wants old news?
Another SEO related tactic is to use media sharing sites such as Flickr and YouTube. The benefit is simple. Each of these sites has their own communities. In fact, YouTube is the third most utilized “search engine” after Yahoo and Google. Therefore, by using these sites to host your media there is the added possibility of gaining exposure within these communities. Think of it as reaching out instead of being protectionist and self-contained.
Once they find you, the hope is they might continue on to your website. Worst case, they have at least found out about your brand. You’ve staked out some mind space. .As tiny as it might be it is a start.
What nice is, while your media might be hosted on these media sharing sites, most blogs make it easy to embed the player from Flickr, YouTube and the like. Your blog is still your main focus but now it’s more of hub in a broader marketing effort than a free standing, self-contained island.
“Okay, I’m finally sold. But I have to ask, is that it?”
As a matter of fact, as they say in the infomercials, “But wait, there’s more…” Again, the benefit revolves around social networks, social media and the fundamental basis for their existence – sharing. Typically, people who use social networks will read something – often on a blog – and then want to share that article to their profiles so their friends can read the article too. Taking advantage of that dynamic not only makes sense, but it’s free as well. A good choice for a free sharing service is AddThis.com.
Mind you, you don’t have to have a blog to use AddThis. However, let’s be realistic, the odds of someone repeatedly sharing your home page is unlikely. On the other hand, as you generate blog content, each article becomes another opportunity for your followers to say, “Look what I found.” At the same time the article is also an opportunity for you to say, “We’d like to share this with you.” And you can post the link on your social networking profile. If you have success stories and other good news that would benefit from more people knowing about it, then a blog is the ideal tool for that.
“But I…”
Yes, there’s always a last but, isn’t there? Not to worry, Part 4 is going to address your final set of fears. “What am I going to blog about?,” and “When am I going to find the time?” are both going to be addressed in Part 4. With that said, I’ll give you a couple hints now so you can prepare your questions for next time. “What?” can be anything relevant you and/or target marketing might be interested in. “When?” is best seen within the context of bang for your buck. That is, blogging can often be more cost effective than traditional advertising.
Mark Simchock 
Chief Alchemist
Alchemy United
We are Chicago-land Police Officers who wrote a song for all FALLEN OFFICERS and published a video in honor of their lives and memory. We wish for everyone involved in your organization to see this “Police Anthem” and take a moment to remember the sacrifices made by everyone you know.
PLEASE POST and FORWARD this link to everyone and every website you know so that others will also remember all of whom have fallen.
If you or any one else would like more information please feel free to contact me.
Ofc. Andrew Morales (Open Key Manager) @ openkeyband@gmail.com or 708-670-9283
Thank You,
OPEN KEY
FINAL CALL – YOU TUBE VIDEO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXzJGA8pyA0
Many thanks to NJBIA for working so hard on this issue!
As reported in New Jersey Business e-zine:
On November 2, New Jersey voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to prevent state government from raiding employee and employer payroll-tax contributions to the Unemployment Insurance (UI) fund, the disability fund and the second injury fund to pay for other state programs. The amendment passed 80 percent to 20 percent.
The New Jersey Business & Industry Association strongly supported this bipartisan ballot initiative and has long opposed diverting Unemployment Insurance tax payments to help balance the state budget. The UI fund was created to build up cash reserves in good economic times so employers would not have to pay higher payroll taxes in a recession when they can least afford it.
The amendment was sponsored by Senate President Stephen Sweeney, Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean, Assembly Republican Leader Alex DeCroce, and Assemblyman John Burzichelli. It was supported by Governor Chris Christie.
This video pulls no punches in pointing out the depths of despair in which many of the Mission clients have sunk to because of their addictions. It acknowledges that overcoming the disease of addiction is very difficult. In a powerful way it makes the case that we are fortunate that there is a place in our community dedicated to reshaping and rebuilding lives.
It was produced by the incredibly talented Stan and Ted Alcorn from Danger Productions.
Watch a few stories on the 2 minute trailer.
The complete video can be viewed on the home page of the:
or below
