In case you missed it, The Next Mayor, came under some fire today from Bruce Schimmel in the Loose Canon column of the City Paper for not making the environment the top issue in the 2007 race for mayor. He also wasn't too happy that we buried the issue in our Neighborhoods section.
To that I offer my sincerest mea culpas (or the grammatically correct, meas culpas). In fact, I went to website that Schimmel plugged, Greenadelphia, and aside from engaging in my pet peeve by referring to the region as the Delaware Valley (I prefer Greater Philadelphia), it is a very useful blog for keeping track of developments taking place in environmental policy for the city and region.
In fact, they even blogged about a neighborhood environmental issue that I discussed a couple weeks ago.
In addition to that, I would point out that the call out quote in our Neighborhoods section and a number of blog posts have focused on writing done about sustainability, planning, green development,green roofs, green buildings, tree planting, storm and waste water infrastructure, the parks system, Philly Car Share, and smoking.
I've pointed out cool environmental initiatives happening in cities like Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco. And we continue to accept people's suggestions in the Name Your Issue section of the blog, a ballot box that Wendy encourage people to stuff.
So in response to Mr. Schimmel, (1) mea culpa for the fact that "The Environment" doesn't have a more prominent showing on the main site, (2) thanks for the shout out in your column and (3) as we continue to redesign and update the site we'll spotlight issues based on what the users of the site and this blog and the electorate at large as indicated by our polls and the polling of others want to see - that's what we've been about all along.
Don't worry, we won't let these candidates off the hook without getting them to tell us what they're going to do to promote a more sustainable and environmentally friendly Philadelphia.