The Next Mayor

So Al Taubenberger is about to get endorsed by the deeply respected senior Senator from Pennsylvania.

How else did he spend his weekend?

At the Coffee Klutch, of course.

The race is on to see which politician will be first to jump onto the Phils playoff bandwagon. My guess is Mayor Street, since there's a City Hall rally today. But we shall see...

Today on Radio Times, guest host Dave Davies will be talking to Thomas Paine Cronin, immediate past president of AFSCME District Council 47, the union representing the city's 6,500 white collar workers. He's served in the post since 1980 and leading the union though negotiations with six mayors and six strikes.

Perhaps he'll share his thoughts on the next mayor's unenviable task of negotiating new contracts with all of the city's unions.

Tune into 91FM at 10 am (just 10 minutes from now!) or click here for instructions on how to listen live over the internet. Later today, I'll provide a link to the podcast of the show, just in case you were unable to hear it live.

(edited to add) Here's the podcast of today's show. You can right click on it (or, Mac users, Ctrl Click) and save it as an .mp3. I'm a little disappointed that the conversation didn't get more into the city's current and future financial condition and how the next set of contract negotiations need to take that in account. Cronin's stories about his dealings with past mayors - especially the one about the time a the FOP president aimed a gun at Mayor Green's chest - are pretty interesting.

You can also participate in the show by calling 1-888-477-9499 or using the comments section of this blog post to get your thoughts out there.

Admitting his candidacy was something of a longshot, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter endorsed Republican Al Taubenberger for mayor today at 30th Street Station.

“I endorse Al, realizing fully the steep climb he has as a Republican candidate in the city of Philadelphia,” said Specter, who spoke before boarding a train to Washington DC.

Specter ­– who ran unsuccessfully for mayor as a Republican in 1967 -- said the city needed a change of leadership.

“Michael Nutter could be an agent of change, but it’s tougher if you come in with the party,” he said.

Taubenberger thanked Specter and gave him a Phillies hat, suggesting that his candidacy was not unlike the Phillies’ quest for a championship.

“Underdogs do have a chance at winning,” he said.

Specter will also hold a fundraiser for Taubenberger on October 20th.

Following the WHYY TV-12 50th Anniversary party on Saturday afternoon, at which I manned a "Next Mayor" table, giving me plenty of opportunities to explain why this election is still important even though, in their words, "we already know who it is," I hoofed it over to the Parkway for the Campus Philly Kick Off. Since this is a festival geared towards the students of the region's many fine institutions of high learning, perhaps I'll share what I learned from covering this event:

1. It's a long walk from 6th and Race to 23 and the Parkway when you've got a tripod and miniDV cam slung over your shoulder, 20 feet of cable in your pocket and a stick microphone in your hand. C'mon, you thought this project had money to pay for cans?

2. College students are soooo much younger than I remember them from when I was in school. And music is soooo much louder.

3. If the Simpsons ever did a parody of two candidates addressing a college-age crowd, they would have their Democrat and Republican in exactly the same outfits that Nutter and Taubenberger were wearing.

4. From Taubenberger, I learned specifically that "war is no good," we need the grass to be greener and that his plan for creating more jobs is to give political science majors jobs on his staff.

5. Al may be a nice guy, but that didn't spare him from a number of choice anti-GOP epithets being hurled from the back of the crowd. Apparently, this wasn't a big hang-out for the young Republicans.

Anyway, here are some highlights from Saturday's event:

(edited to add) Judging from his vigorous defense of the President, Taubenberger is anxious to shred his Republican membership card.

At WHYY TV-12's 50th Anniversary event on Saturday, I set up a little Next Mayor information table to remind people that there is, in fact, an election in November and regardless of the likely outcome, it's still an important event.

Why? Elections, unlike any other event, give us a chance to interact with candidates and talk to them, and each other, about all of the many issues that confront us each and every day. They give us a chance to discuss the role that government plays, or should play, in confronting those issues. Elections give us a chance to express what we want from our government officials and help set an agenda for the short term - until the next election - and the long term.

So to everyone that came up to me, read some of my literature, asked about the project, learned about our The Next Mayor Candidate Forum on October 25th, and the said, "Well, we know who it's going to be." I simply replied, "that doesn't mean we shouldn't use every opportunity to get him to talk about the issues."

And then I gave them one, actually several, of these:

(Photo via Flickr from user Triborough)

Here's the deal, folks. I have about 4000 of those buttons and I'd really like to get them all to a good home. If you want one, email me and give me some way to contact you.

While you're at it, get some information about our mayoral forum webcast on 10/25. You're going to have to take a couple minutes to do a quick, simple, and free registration but I guarantee you an experience with a candidate forum unlike any you've ever had. You can also find out how to get your own face on the broadcast through the magic of YouTube.

For all the Phillies fans out there (and I count myself as one of them to the point where the trip to my first Phillies game at the Vet is emblazoned in my memory), it's been a good run, but thanks to a certain sports weekly with a well known cover curse, we can pretty much be sure that National League East Champions will be the only banner we're raising next spring.

However, another Philadelphia institution was featured in a national magazine this week. That's right, Michael Nutter's dream has come true with a nice, long feature in what's gotta be his favorite magazine - Governing. (I mean, c'mon, with a wonkish article that compares "cool cities" to "nerdistans," how can it not be?)

The on-line version of the article includes long footnotes that make it read like something from David Foster Wallace. For those of you who have been following the race from the beginning, there's probably nothing in there that you don't already know but you can gain some insight into how the rest of the country is seeing this race.

It also includes a term that, according to the author, Philadelphians use to describe the city - "Bos-troit." I have to admit, I've never heard that term before but I guess it's as accurate as any term used to describe a city with thriving and struggling neighborhoods in close proximity. The article is also useful for reminding us of things we may have forgotten about in all the "elect the Nutter, save the world" frenzy of primary:

The school situation is a symptom of a larger challenge: Philadelphia has what is technically a strong-mayor system of government, but in fact there are vast reaches of policy over which Nutter will have little or no control. He can’t make decisions about SEPTA, the metro area’s financially troubled transit agency. He will have little to say about two new casinos going up in Philadelphia, the result of a deal arranged by the legislature. Even the parking meters in the city are now operated by the state. “The mayor of Philadelphia has far less power and control than people think,” says Phil Goldsmith, the city’s former managing director. “We’ve become a very balkanized, fragmented government.”

Toss in some reminders of a pending fiscal crisis, unions chomping at the bit for raises and better health care, a tax rate that continues to be higher than most cities and a crumbling infrastructure, and you get a picture that's an even more sobering reminder of the challenges ahead than any sports magazine cover jinx can muster.

You guys do realize you have one week to register to vote in the general, right?

OK, so the general is not quite the thrill-fest that the primary was. But I know there are lots of Philadelphians who haven't bothered to change their registration, or haven't bothered to get registered at all.

This is a good time to fix that. Go to the Committee of Seventy's Web site, here, for a downloadable registration form that you can mail in.

The 13th Floor, Governing Magazine's blog took a moment to play "guess that mayor" and gave the following list of accomplishments:

-A budget surplus

-A pioneering effort to bring wireless Internet citywide

Of course we all know that they're talking about our very own John Street. They then make the comment:

What's more, almost everyone hates him.

They succinctly explain that Street's defenders tend to blame his portrayal in the media for his low approval ratings while his opponents point out that many of his accomplishments can't make up for much deeper problems - problems like a looming budget crisis that threaten to wipe out all of the gains that Philadelphia has made since the early 90s.

How does this set things up for the next mayor? On the one hand, it would seem that Street has set the bar so low that whichever candidate succeeds him needs only be reasonably personable and drop the annual murder total to a previously-unacceptable-but-now-good-by-comparison 390. On the other hand, like the championship-starved Philadelphia fans who now expect the Phillies to lead them to the promised land, the expectations for the next mayor are going to be so high, that one little stumble can send him down to Street's approval ratings.

What can I say? We're Philadelphia. We live with the dizzying highs and the sickening lows. No creamy middles for us.

Here's some really interesting non-Rockies-related stuff from Denver.

Parking authorities there are now using a new, high-tech "boot" to force ticket scofflaws to pay their fines. Now Denverites can use their cell phones to call in and pay their fines by credit card. They'll receive a code to unlock the boot and go on their merry way - though they'll have to return the boot themselves or face additional fines.

Pretty neat stuff.

Michael Nutter and Al Taubenberger continued their back slapping, bosom buddies routine today at a forum at the Union League, hosted by radio personality Michael Smerconish.

Ever congenial, the Democratic and Republican mayoral candidates clashed only a handful of times.

Yawn.

Taubenberger said he didn’t support Nutter’s “stop and frisk” policing proposal, which Nutter seems to have started referring to as “stop, think, don’t carry.”

“I believe in some ways the policy already exists,” Taubenberger said. “If there’s probable cause, the police have every right to stop someone and frisk them.”

Nutter said the plan would improve public safety by getting illegal weapons off the street.

The two also struck different tones on the city’s ability to fund pension and health care costs for city workers.

“We’ve got to come to the reality of where we are today,” Nutter said. “Unlike the federal government, we don’t print money in the basement. Our pension fund currently is about 52 percent funded.”

But Taubenberger seemed to have a different take on the financial situation, saying “you just have to take a look and find where those dollars are.”

The two joked around frequently throughout the hour-long session. At one point Taubenberger spoke about his plans to bring jobs to Philadelphia.

“If I became mayor, I would hire Michael Nutter,” he said.

Nutter shot back: “You can’t afford me.”

Al Taubenberger had a press conference today to release a bold policy statement. Someone else's bold policy statement. That was first put out several months ago.

Ok. I'll ignore for now the fact that the most substantive policy idea to come out of the Taubenberger campaign is a plan that John Perzel introduced in September 2006. The plan itself is more of the same "lets go to Harrisburg to take care of our problems by begging them for money since they won't give us the authority to make laws of our own." Those tactics may have worked in the past, but if this past primary has shown us anything, it has shown us that the same, tired, old promises about being able to "go to Harrisburg" and "go to Washington" and get money out of them have worn a little thin.

So let's take a closer look at Taubenberger's statement:

The plan calls for 10,000 new police officers to be distributed throughout the state with 1,345 coming to Philadelphia. While many feel stricter gun laws are the answer to quell the violence, Perzel believes the current laws need to be enforced first.

Both Taubenberger and Perzel agree - putting more police on the streets is the only way to enforce these laws.

To me, if a candidate is putting a quote from another elected official in his press release to demonstrate his support for that official, it means that he agrees with everything in the quote. Therefore, Taubenberger does not support one-gun-a-month legislation. Yet, according to statements he's made before, including at yesterday's Union League Forum, he also doesn't support aggressive policing (a.k.a. "stop and frisk" or "stop, think, don't carry" or whatever it's being called today) to get guns away from those who can't legally carry them.

So what are those 1,345 extra cops going to all day? Stand on street corners and with buckets and signs that say put your illegal gun here?

Listen as I say this as clearly as I can. I don't begrudge firefighters any benefits they can get. There's is a dangerous job that I don't think I'd ever want to do. I might complain about the eye strain I get from looking at a computer or the boredom I feel from going to yet another candidate forum where no one says anything interesting, but at least I don't have to run into burning buildings.

That said, I get a little more worried about the future of the city every time I read another PICA memo about the budget. This one takes the Street administration to task for not appealing a court decision to award the firefighters health benefit contribution increases equaling 45 percent over three years.

The major problem is that the administration assumed much lower increases in benefits when they presented a barely-balanced five-year plan. So now the city either has to appeal the benefits and hope that they win or change the five-year plan to bring it into balance with this new reality. Of course, the only ways to do that are cut services (more) or raise taxes.

And that's not the worst of it.

According to the PICA memo:

Additionally, with all of the other municipal unions in arbitration or negotiations over health benefits, and the next mayor facing new contracts for all of the unions by July of 2008, this award sets a potential precedent for other agreements that could cripple the new administration as it attempts to maintain or improve services while balancing the Plan.

Yep... cripple. So, once again, here's the situation facing the next mayor. Either he stays firm on bringing the skyrocketing costs of benefits in line by prying concessions out of the unions, most likely after a long, contentious negotiation and/or a strike. So now, we've got costs under control but city workers, who don't really make all that much anyway, have their health and retirement security lessened possibly creating a whole lot of sick and/or poor old people when they retire.

Or... the next mayor gives in and settles for benefits that continue to eat up more and more of the budget until just about the only thing being paid for by tax money are salaries, health benefits and the pension fund (and prison costs). Infrastructure crumbles. Potholes don't get filled. Recycling gets picked up every other week. The grass at parks and rec centers goes unmowed. Not enough cops on the streets. Actually... doesn't seem all that much different from what we have now. Ok. Imagine all of that stuff and a whole lot worse.

Option three is to grant those benefits and raise taxes to get the revenue to pay for them and maintain or, gasp, improve services. Would Nutter do that? Guess we'll know all of these answers by this time next year.

Meanwhile, everyone follow my lead. Set up separate bins in your house for each of the 7 different types of plastic, metal/glass, food waste (make sure it seals), paper, cardboard and every other type of garbage. Then figure out where you can recycle each thing. You can use this site but you're going to find that for a lot of different plastics, you'll have to drop it off on an Ambler curbside for pick up. You may also want to start a compost pile. This will prepare you for next summer's garbage strike. Either that, or buy a pick up truck and charge your neighbors a couple bucks each to haul their trash. Just watch out picketers.

Mike Nutter will be doing the following on Saturday:

9:00 am: Mount Airy Community Clean-Up Chew Avenue and E. Pleasant Street

4:30 pm: South Philadelphia High School Centennial Celebration, South Philadelphia High School, Broad Street & Snyder Ave.

And these things on Sunday:

11:00 am: Congregation Rodeph Shalom Men’s Club Meeting, 615 North Broad Street

11:30 am: Philadelphia Columbus Day Parade Broad & Federal Streets

3:00 pm: Outfest Event Spruce & 13th Streets

And Al Taubenberger will be doing these things on Saturday:

8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.: Attending the "Mutt Strut," a fund-raiser for Philadelphia animal welfare agency PAWS, at FDR Park, Broad and Pattison

10:00 a.m.: Attending the Engine 52 Celebration, Engine 52, 4501 Van Kirk Street

College students, that is.

Temple University has a program called MURL - the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab as part of the journalism program. For a while now, journalism students have been sent out into various neighborhoods to dig up some stories and the results have been fascinating.

The Next Mayor project is partnering up with this program to help share the work of these students with folks in the city and the region who are interested in Philadelphia's issues. By exploring issues at the neighborhood level, we are hoping to show that Philadelphians, whether they're from Bridesburg or Bella Vista, share similar concerns about the future of their communities and their city.

Check out a few of the videos that we're currently featuring from the MURL program. We'll be changing that page from time to time to feature different videos.

You can also poke around MURL's own website to see what else they've been working on. They take "multimedia" pretty seriously. You'll see in-depth print stories, extra video footage of interviews with neighborhood residents, photo spreads from well-known neighborhood spots and tightly produced video features.

I just settled in at the Doubletree Hotel's Ormandy Ballroom for a two-day conference sponsored by the International Economic Development Council. Over the next day and a half, the biggest names and thinkers in urban economic development will be reviewing 40 years of work in that field, discussing what has worked, what hasn't worked and where we go from here.

They've chose Philadelphia for the site of this event for the specific examples offered by this city's recent history. In fact, at 4 pm today, they're devoting an entire session to "What we learned about urban economic development in Philadelphia."

I'll be live blogging throughout the event and shooting some video from some of the more interesting presentations. I've also just learned that Michael Nutter will be at the lunch today. Though, if you think about it, that's not too surprising. For someone who has "wonk" thrown into his description as often as Nutter does, an event like this is like the World Series is to a baseball fan.

I'll also be using what I learn here to add to our "Good Growth" and "Jobs" pages on thenextmayor.com/

More in a little while...

The conversation now has turned toward a review of a paper on the overview of urban economic development of the past 40 years. The conference participants are adding their own input to this briefing paper, providing specific examples from their own experience and challenging or adding to the historical conclusions of the paper.

But for the lay person, I'd like to start with defining economic development. I've skimmed over the paper now and I think it assumes that everyone knows exactly what we're talking about.

As far as I can tell, "economic development" basically refers to any action or legislation by government - local, state or federal - that is intended, either directly or indirectly, to lead to the creation of new employment opportunities.

Sometimes these strategies and actions work. Sometimes they fail miserably. The paper, which I'll summarize later, gives a lot of example where the unintended consequence of a government action was the direct opposite of economic development in urban areas.

One participant just defined economic development as previously being "smokestack chasing" or business attraction and retention - which simply wasn't working. She then added that it had to evolve to mean "quality of life" as well - making areas livable so that people and businesses would desire to locate in a certain place.

Up to now, the discussion about the changes in cities over the past 40 years and the challenges moving forward hasn't touched on what one participant referred to as "the 800 pound gorilla in room" - race relations.

Mr. John Sower, President of the Chesapeake Business Finance Corp, a Washington-based SBA, started this conversation of race by talking about white attitudes in the 40s and 50s which came into view as a result of the riots of the 1960s when it the conditions of cities and the "white flight" that had occurred over the previous 20 years came to light. Mr. Sower was seconded on this point by Mr. Michael Montgomery who offered that the discussion of economic development needs to include the urban superintendents of schools, for obvious reasons.

The conversation is turning to the mayors of big cities and other city management professionals and how they didn't understand the implications of many federal urban programs for their cities. Economic development policy didn't have a place near the center of power in cities for several years and has only recently been given a place at the table.

The conversation is turning now to how certain cities responded to economic development initiatives. International Economic Development Council (IEDC) President and CEO just gave Philadelphia some recognition for being one of the best cities at putting instruments in place to carry out an urban economic development agenda. (Go Philly!)

Click "Continue Reading" to learn how other cities dealt with their challenges.

The conversation has taken an interesting turn with the question "who were some of the mayors who understood urban economic development and fought the battle for cities?"

Henry Maier, mayor of Milwaukee for 28 years, was the first mentioned. According to Mr. Ronald C. Kysiak, who worked for Maier, the mayor opened an economic development office and forged alliances with other big cities in Wisconsin and rural counties by explaining to them that they all were facing the same challenge - losing jobs to the suburbs. How interesting could that be? The next mayor of Philadelphia linking up, not only with the surrounding suburbs, but with Clearfield, Dauphin, Forest and other primarily rural counties in Pennsylvania.

Mayor Bill Schaefer of Baltimore was also mentioned for the work he did for that city. Others mentioned include George Voinovich for his time as a Republican mayor of Cleveland during the Reagan administration.

(edited to add) Mr. James C. Hankla from Long Beach, California, made the important point that successful "economic development mayors surround themselves with prominent economic development professionals." The mayor can't do all of the work himself and for the most part needs to use the bully pulpit to push for changes. The takeaway of this statement for Philadelphia is that it will be important to watch the next mayor during the transition period to see if he surrounds himself with these "prominent economic development professionals."

(edited to add II) Mr. Finkle from IECD has asked for more names of mayors who have walked the economic development walk, to which the following mayors were put out there:
Shirley Franklin from Atlanta
Francis Slay from St. Louis
Ed Rendell
Rudy Giuliani
Tony Williams, who will be featured in a future Next Mayor video, and Adrian Fenty from Washington D.C.
Richard Daley in Chicago

Check out the links for more info about these folks.

The morning session has come to a close and lunch will be starting at noon. Walt D'Alessio, who would be in the Urban Economic Development Hall of Fame, if there were such a thing, for his work in Philadelphia, will be introducing Michael Nutter.

Just before breaking, Jeff Finkle introduced me and explained my role on The Next Mayor and then solicited from the crowd their advice for the next mayor of Philadelphia. (Actually, he asked what advice would they have for Michael Nutter. Looks like everyone understands the reality of the political situation here.) I scribbled some notes rather furiously which I'll share later. Apparently, Nutter himself will be asking for such feedback from this eminent group and I plan on getting some video of that.

Live blogging will pick up after lunch.

...for today's coverage of the endorsements so far in the race. The Service Employees International Union, which represents health care, public services and building services workers and has over 13,000 members in Philadelphia, is planning to endorse Michael Nutter tomorrow at 1 p.m.

Just got back from the lunch session where I got some video of Michael Nutter speaking to and taking questions from a room of urban economic development professionals. Of course, the reception he got was pretty warm. Nutter got the rock star treatment that Bono seemed to get from the folks in the Inquirer/Daily News building a little while ago.

I'm going to scarf down some food real quick and do a post that includes the recommendations made by this group for Philadelphia's next mayor.

Stay tuned.

How come every time I hear the word Dayton, I immediately think of the SNL skit referred to in the title of this blog post?

Right now, the group is getting a presentation about economic development efforts in Dayton, Ohio. Starting in 1972, these efforts included several downtown redevelopment projects, industrial park and site development, neighborhood development projects, etc.

Click on "Continue Reading" to see just how similar Dayton's experience has been to Philadelphia's.

"9/11, as tragic as it was, broke the molecule of economic development into various pieces allowing us to see the effects of each part of those pieces." - Ken Patton on the effects of 9/11 on lower Manhattan.

I'm sitting through a pretty interesting discussion of market forces on real estate decisions in New York. Mr. Patton says, in spite of predictions that businesses would relocate far away from the urban core due to safety concerns and prices, the opposite has happened. Businesses, nationwide, have actually been moving to the high-rent, less vacant spaces, primarily in Class A, modern office space. He compared these offices spaces to graphite shafts on golf clubs. They're more expensive but everyone who's serious about golf realizes that they need them to compete.

We're seeing the same thing in Philadelphia with the low vacancy of new buildings like the Comcast Tower.

The presentation shows, however, just how much of an outlier New York City is when put in with the rest of the nation's large cities. One chart placed lines representing employment and real wages on graphs over time from the 1970s for New York and the United States. In New York, employment has remained relatively flat (how could it go up?) while real wages have skyrocketed. The opposite is seen for the nation as a whole, with employment growing rapidly and real wages actually remaining flat and, most recently, declining.

The lesson? I guess if you want to be the mayor of city with high productivity, high-wage jobs, move to New York. We'll see where the conversation goes and whether the room thinks New York has any lessons to offer to other cities. I expect the Philly inferiority complex to rear its ugly head.

Click "Continue Reading" to read about the comments or questions on the New York experience.

Before we take an in-depth look at the lessons that Philadelphia has for economic development efforts, we're using a few minutes to talk about what the future holds.

Mr. Don Hunter started the conversation by asking whether housing or something else revitalize cities and drive economic development.

Mr. Herb Bailey picks up the ball on that question by talking about his experience in Miami. Mr. Bailey is the former assistant city manager for Miami's departments of Development, Housing Conservation, Finance and Community Development. He makes the point that downtowns need to become "user friendly" to attract people to live, shop and play there.

Jeff Finkle focuses the question. Have we given up on maintaining urban spaces for anything other than residential and retail? Have we given up on manufacturing in cities?

Participants agree that this a big issues, especially because of the point already raised about the relative cost to governments of residential vs. industrial/commercial space.

Click on "Continue Reading" to see where the discussion goes.

I have some crazy complicated notes written down about this part of the conversation and I'm going to have to sort through them to make some kind of coherent blog post out of it.

I will say, it's kind of cool to see all of these economic development professionals with such intense interest in what they can learn from Philadelphia. It's nice to know that we've done some things right.

I'll be back here tomorrow when the conversation will turn a little more to recommendations for where to go with all of this information. What does the future hold for urban economic development? I'll also work on piecing together the video from Nutter's lunch time speech. That should be ready by the end of the day tomorrow.

Things are just about to get started this morning at the International Council of Economic Development conference. The first item on the agenda is a presentation about PIDC, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, by it's president, Peter Longstreth.

PIDC is one of those many "quasi-public agencies" that many people in Philadelphia don't know anything about. Hopefully, this session, as well as being a tutorial for the folks in the room here can also shed some light on this organization for readers of this blog and followers of The Next Mayor project.

More updates to come soon.

Peter Longstreth, the president of PIDC, starts by reminding everyone about the national trends that have affected all cities - suburbanization, corporate consolidation and relocation, productivity gains, transformation from manufacturing to service-based, reduction of federal resources and many of the social/poverty problems affecting urban areas.

9:01 AM: Fun fact: there are about 662,000 workers in Philadelphia down from probably over a million in 1950. However, there has been a growth in employees in Philadelphia in 5 of the last 9 years.

Click on "Continue Reading" to read more about Peter Longstreth's presentation on urban economic development in Philadelphia.

Peter Longstreth from PIDC just wrapped up his presentation about current economic development efforts in Philadelphia. So this is as good a time as any to start tying up some loose ends.

I started this live blogging effort with a question: What is economic development?

Jeff Finkle, the organizer of this event, saw that question and my attempt at an answer and provided me with an answer that is, at the same time, more concise and broader than mine:

Economic Development is the creation, retention, and expansion of jobs, the development of tax base and the enhancement of wealth.

I think I came close.

We're about to move on to the final sessions. Where do we go from here? And how do we apply those lessons to Philadelphia or any urban setting? What advice does this group have for future urban economic developers?

While acknowledging that "there is no Marshal Plan for urban areas," Mr. Victor Hausner says that there is a debate going on, especially among Democrats, about a national economic development strategy to deal with globalization. What's missing however, is what he calls a "sub-national" economic development strategy, specifically a coherent plan for economic development in urban areas.

What can, like the ones assembled in this room, do to fill that void? Hausner gives examples of past influences of urban economic development professionals on the federal level, citing the Carter administration specifically. He also cites the examples of Great Britain where e.d. professionals have influenced that nations government to invest tens of millions in urban economic development.

Opportunities

Hausner continues by describing how the international economy provides an opportunity for cities. The potential for partnership between foreign and American firms is substantial. Other nations have programs to expand their small and medium-sized businesses to other countries. The United States should be welcoming those firms into its cities. There's also an opportunity to attract the wealth that is being built up in other countries by making it easier for wealthy foreign individuals to get their green cards and relocate themselves and their families to the U.S. (ala the EB-5 Visa)

Provided without attribution (my apologies) because my position in the room makes it tough for me to see all of the names. The recommendations are probably the most important parts of this post.

1. Incentives are key. Tax incentives for brownfield reclamation are an example. Be careful about the use of eminent domain for economic development. Economic developers need more business people in their ranks, participating in their conferences and giving them feedback.

Click on "Continue Reading" to see what the room has to offer.

Walt D'Alessio offered his perspective as a longtime Philadelphia economic developer on what Philly can take away from the recommendations in the previous blog post.

He said that the most important point was establishing the connection between economic development AND workforce development.

According to Walt, the new mayor (Nutter) has to take the initiative of breaking down the political and geographic boundaries in the region.

Michael Nutter today appeared in the Northeast with U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz to talk about crime fighting strategies, and Catherine Lucey was there to report on it.

(The Northeast location had no real significance beyond proximity to Schwartz's office.)

Casey and Schwartz pledged their support to Nutter, but mainly wanted to talk about the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which provides grants for state and local law enforcement.

The Senate is expected to soon send a bill reauthorizing the program to President Bush. Schwartz and Casey said they feared he would veto it.

“The decision shouldn’t be to cut a program that works,” said Casey. “He’ll give $100 billion to wealthy people in a tax cut.”

Nutter agreed.

“Everyone knows crime went down in the late 90s when we had full funding for the COPS program,” he said.

I've been recovering from my marathon live-blogging sessions at the International Economic Development Council's "Celebrating 40 Years of Economic Development" event on Monday and Tuesday. It's given me time to go through a lot of my favorite blogs and some new ones that I hadn't seen before. I realized that I've gotten away from one of the things that I think a good blog does - provide links to other interesting things on the internet so that the blog's users don't have to do it themselves.

And trust me. There's plenty of good information being generated about pretty much every Philadelphia issue you can imagine.

So let's get started.

One of my old favorites, Young Philly Politics, uses its own cyber bully pulpit to take Councilman Darrell Clarke to task for his alleged involvement in getting a political rival's vacant lot cleaning contract terminated. You may remember that I wrote about this when the Inquirer first did this story. YPP's Dan U-A shares the outrage of City Paper columnist Bruce Schimmel and encourages the media "to keep hammering away at Clarke and the Mayor, and [get] some answers." As a fairly new member of "the media" my investigative skills aren't quite as polished as some of the good folks at the Daily News, but if anyone has any tips for me, feel free to share.

Staying with YPP for a moment, contributor CharlieNJ uses a New York Times piece on Seattle's amazing transformation as a leader in recycling to point out, once again, the sad state of Philadelphia's recycling rate. Where Seattle seems to collect, nay, mandate that just about everything made out of, um, matter be recycled, Philadelphia recycles just 5% of its waste stream. In fact, I think I cause more environmental damage driving my plastics and cardboard to a recycling drop off site than I prevent by recycling them.

It's tough to find anyone who has ever spoken on the record to explain why this hasn't happened. Most explanations come in the comments sections of stories about recycling and are some anonymously written variation of "John Street and [insert city official's name here] don't care about recycling." In a 2005 Philadelphia Weekly article, Streets Commissioner Clarena Tolson attempts to explain it by placing the blame back on you and me:

But Tolson insists improving residential recycling rates is an epic task.