The one candidate for mayor, Michael Nutter, and four of the men who seem to be flirting with the idea -- State Rep. Dwight Evans, former City Controller Jonathan Saidel, former UnitedHealthcare boss Tom Knox, and U.S. Congressman Chaka Fattah -- participated in a forum at an African-American Chamber of Commerce event today. (Brady called out with laryngitis; Dougherty pleaded schedule conflict.)
Under discussion was minority business development, crime and education. The Daily News' Catherine Lucey was there and did actual reporting (and the Daily News' Jori Klein took these photos) -- so instead we'll offer what seemed like the most surprising or interesting points the Would-Bes made. We also collected the unasked questions at the end of the day and will ask the participants to answer a selection.
1) Dwight Evans made a good point that the city should have a entrepreneurial charter school. If we have one for future architects (which is pretty awesome, actually), why not for future business owners? Hey, doesn't he run a bunch of schools?
2) Jonathan Saidel offered a tale of a African-American business owner who waited a full year to have his MBEC certification turned down. The agency said he wasn't black. (Being able to claim that, as city controller, you investigated MBEC, the city's minority-owned business development agency, plays well in a crowd of African-American business owners. And it takes particular guts to tell that story with the new MBEC leader present.)
"The problem he faced wasn't that he wasn't African-American," Saidel said. "It was that he wasn't a friend of somebody."
3) Michael Nutter pointed out that the city and the school district too often feel like wholly separate, disconnected bureaucracies instead of the interdependent system that they truly are. He said he wants to "remove the disconnect" between the city and the district. (Now might be a good time to try that idea.)
4) The best part of Tom Knox's speech -- which he read, and we have the feeling we're going to have to hear more than one more time -- was when he pointed out that an underfunded school system is the biggest barrier to equal economic participation that the city has.
5) Fattah wouldn't talk about plans for the future, instead touting programs he's promoted as a Congressman. But he did say His Big Decision about whether or not to run would come in about a week. We'll keep you posted.
Comments (9)
Nice job with the recap, Wendy! And the pics look great too!
Hold on... let me look at my notes here... oh yeah...
Nice job with the recap, Wendy! And the pics look great too!
I'll have some video from their perfomances - both the fun stuff and some serious stuff a little later on.
Posted by Dan | November 9, 2006 7:08 AM
The city's FY 2006 budget lists $57M for "education" and not $730M as Joe Grace claims in that article you linked to (whether "education" refers to the school district, CCP or what is anybody's guess). I can't find any other budget section that looks like it might account for the rest, unless the city funds a portion of the district's payroll and just lumps it together with its own (which, along with benefits and pensions, accounts for over half of the core budget, I might add). Anybody have information on this?
P.S. Looks like Fattah's still crowing about his Gear Up program. Is there anything else he can do other than get some pork from D.C. right before an election he wants to run in? I'm anxiously waiting to hear something of substance from him.
Posted by Dave | November 9, 2006 11:27 AM
Hmmm. That $730 million...could that be the schools portion of property taxes? In which case, is it fair to say the city "provided" it? I have called Joe Grace for an explanation and will comment back with the results. Always keeping us on out toes, Dave...
Posted by Wendy | November 9, 2006 12:19 PM
The link I provided doesn't seem to work (at least for me), so here it is again:
http://www.phila.gov/reports/pdfs/Budget%20in%20Brief.pdf
For the record, I got the $57M number from the pie chart on page 16 of the PDF document. I also searched the document and found specific references to the School District on pages 8, 18 and 111. It appears that, of that $57M for "education", $22M goes to CCP (the Community College of Philadelphia) and $35M goes to the School District (total spending on education represents only 1.66% of the general fund budget). Also, from page 111, it appears that budgeted spending on the school district, in actual dollars, hasn't increased at all since FY 2004. Page 8 mentions $19.5M in additional spending budgeted for FY 2006, which is "primarily federal and state funds."
I would caution that I'm under the impression that the budget changes a lot throughout the fiscal year (see Budgetwatch articles on philadelphiaforward.org), so it wouldn't surprise me if those figures weren't fully accurate (although "actual spending" for FY 2004 is reported on page 111 of the PDF document, so it would appear that the school district's budget doesn't traditionally increase much over budgeted/projected spending). I would also caution that I'm not a budget expert ;-)
I definitely think that better reporting from the city on how it spends our tax dollars would be beneficial for everyone. This should be a huge campaign issue, IMO.
Posted by Anonymous | November 9, 2006 2:51 PM
Excellent report about auditing.
And a Joe Grace report: I called him the moment I commented earlier. And I gave him my cell, which stays with me every moment. Still no call back.
Posted by Wendy | November 9, 2006 10:30 PM
Hey,
How come I wasn't invited? Society overall is my business.
RoyLS
Philosopher
Philadelphia
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Get-Hustled-Higher-Level/dp/1847286925/sr=8-3/qid=1163095947/ref=sr_1_3/102-2605660-5218545?ie=UTF8&s=books
Posted by Roy Philip | November 10, 2006 10:02 AM
It seems like one candidate can truly state, been there, done that. It seems Saidel can speak and has ideas on improving every facet of city life. I wish the other candidates had spent as much time in the city trying to improve things.
Posted by Steve | November 10, 2006 10:35 AM
Is it true that Knox was...not so good?
Posted by Kathy | November 10, 2006 3:38 PM
Still nothing from Joe Grace. I did talk to him briefly Friday night, and he said he knew he owed me a call. I hope you noticed I haven't given up.
Since the question was asked: Knox did seem to mix up his notes and briefly repeat some of it.
Posted by Wendy | November 13, 2006 10:34 PM