Considering that most of the coverage that Philadelphia has been getting has been about the murder rate, it's good to see the City get some props for a program - even if it is a program that isn't exactly achieving its goals. In yesterday's New Orleans Times-Picayune, there was a long feature about Mayor Ray Nagin's recent visit to Philadelphia during which he learned about the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.
Our own local papers have pretty much wrote NTI to death a while ago so this article serves as a good refresher to evaluate the successes and failures of Mayor Street's signature program. It also includes a healthy dose of former Daily News columnist and current Nutter policy chief, Mark Alan Hughes as well as quotes from Nutter himself.
In discussing what held NTI's shortcomings, Nutter says that the biggest problem "was not its ideas; it was in its execution." Hughes adds that the original goal of demolishing derelict buildings and cleaning vacant lots - a goal which came with a $296 million price tag - quickly took a backseat as the project was allowed to become "something for everybody."
Simply to get Council approval of the project, Mayor Street had to give each of the council members an equal share to use at their discretion. End result: demolitions occured at no faster rate, per year, than they had before NTI but a lot more money got spread around.
So that brings us to where we are today - with a handful of candidates promising various large scale projects and programs. Who will bend to the will of City Council and give up too much just to get the headlines of passing their next great initiative (call it "NGI")? Where will that leave us four years from now? And of course, with personnel costs (pensions and healthcare costs) expected to rise as fast as they are in the next few years, will the money be there?
Read the article. Like I said, it's a good refresher course.
Comments (10)
You don't find it ironic that Nutter criticizes NTI for being "something for everyone" when he was the one that went straight to the papers complaining when his little piece of the pork was cut by a few thousand dollars?
Posted by Captain Atom | April 20, 2007 1:01 PM
From what I've heard, Nutter was one of the only district council people making intelligent use of the funding. I think he was making targeted investments in renovation and infill at the edges of stable neighborhoods to try to promote their expansion into blighted areas. Apparently, however, the favored approach to spending NTI money was the kind of large-scale eminent domain use employed by councilwoman Blackwell (who's very influential with RDA and PHA), among others.
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