The Next Mayor

I had the opportunity to attend part of the Great Expectations Citizen's Convention yesterday at the Pennsylvania Convention Center (Chris Satullo blogged about it here). Whenever I go to one of these events and see so many dedicated, thoughtful people in one place, it gives me hope that at some point in the future, their collective energy will overcome the "me first" attitude that has so often pervaded our city government.

Mayor-elect Michael Nutter delivered the keynote speech and Councilman At-Large-elect Bill Green IV was close by in the crowd. (edited to add) Councilwoman-elect Maria Quinones-Sanchez was also in attendance. Other than that, it didn't look like any other elected officials chose to grace the event with their presence, which was unfortunate.

Anyway, I got some video of Nutter's speech and caught a few moments from the break out sessions during which the participants got in small groups to discuss one of the 12 points of the Citizens Agenda.

So I'm going to finish up editing that video into something short and concise and post it in a couple hours. For now, you can read coverage of the event here and here.

While I'm off editing video, I'll let you ponder the meaning of this poem from today's paper by a Daily News letter writer:

Poetic justice

Margie Domard, Philadelphia

Who is the shark? Who is the cat? Why didn't the shark eat the cat? Was the shark at a disadvantage since, clearly, he was out of his natural habitat? Trippy...

Finished up a video recap that tries to take a 40-minute speech and 5 hour event and boil it down into 5 minutes. See the Nutter-elect in action:

I gave links to print coverage earlier today.

Today's Quote of the Day comes from Hizzoner, Mayor John Street, to be ever after known as "the math mayor."

From today's Philadelphia Tribune, in a very extensive interview that basically covered the mayor's career from birth, Street had this to say about the FBI investigation:

“I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it. Of course it would have been better if everyone had been doing the right thing and there had been no need for an investigation. But one person was convicted in my administration, not two. Any less and it would be zero...

My video editing from yesterday got in the way of my goal of reviewing of Great Expectations Film contest finalist so I'll catch up with two for today.

So let's talk first about Philadelphia Child. In the next post, I'll get to Northern Liberties. (As you can see I've provided links back to the Great Expectations website and I encourage you to register there and provide feedback for these films. The contest may be over but I'm sure they'd love to hear what you thought about them. Please consider copying that feedback into the comments section of this post.)

Philadelphia Child was produced and directed by Nadine Patterson, who grew up in Nicetown-Tioga and now lives in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. The film doesn't follow the same, straightforward, narrative flow of the previous film, so don't expect "once upon a time" and "happily ever after." Instead, this film uses some haunting poetry and gritty imagery to tell the story of the child who grows up in this city. The poetry and the images are very much left up to the interpretation of the individual viewer.

The edits are jumpy and the filters used on the video take the viewer out of any kind of comfort zone and makes one question the experience that a Philly child goes through as he or she moves towards being a Philly adult. Like the film itself, such a childhood is filled with stops and starts, advances and reverses.

But in the end, as the film shows us, a child born in this city, while facing multiple obstacles, also has countless opportunities and sources of inspiration from what is a truly unique city. It also reminds us that each of us is a child of this city, with our beliefs and conventions constantly being shaped by the experiences - both good and bad - that this city has to offer us.

Click "Continue Reading" to check out the film.

Let's turn now to the film Northern Liberties by Steve Janas of Delanco. Steve is an experienced film maker and a Philadelphia-area native, who returned to Philly in 2003 following a 10-year stint living in Los Angeles.

This film focuses on one neighborhood in particular - the oft-written about, hipster mecca of Northern Liberties. While exploring the dominant themes of change that have come to characterize the Northern Liberties story, the film is a little light on the tension that those changes have created. Aside from a brief admonition by Pete Saunders of Ortlieb's Jazz Haus who hopes that the developer-driven interest in the neighborhood doesn't displace the "artists" who helped to revitalize the area, there is little discussion of gentrification. Judging from recent news about the area, I think the "starving" artists have already been forced out, leaving for the frontiers of Kensington, Fishtown and Bridesburg.

The film focuses on the benefits that this eclectic mix of stores, bars, venues and people have to offer for the visitor and resident alike. At times the film becomes like a travelogue, hosted by DJ Frosty who also owns a building in the neighborhood. He takes us on a tour of the hot spots including Ortlieb's, The Standard Tap and Silk City. DJ Frosty also gives us a quick refresher on the history of Northern Liberties, a history told in the multiple layers of abandoned, renovated and new buildings. Cut Northern Liberties open, count the rings and you can see a story of many Philadelphia neighborhoods played out.

A bustling manufacturing and commerce center is reduced to the ashes of an urban wasteland. The seeds of a fledgling artist community fall among the enriched soil and begin to regenerated the area, eventually to replaced by the looming condo towers to cover the landscape like their predecessors - the factory smokestacks - once did.

Northern Liberties shows us the end result, the "climax forest" stage of growth, that can happen in so many other neighborhoods if the conditions are just right. Now, figuring out those conditions... that's the hard part.

Click "Continue Reading" to check out the film.

Click on continue reading to check out the film.

It seems that casinos have cleared another hurdle with a victory by SugarHouse in the PA State Supreme Court and they're poised to break ground any day now according to most of today's news coverage. Foxwoods, apparently wishing that they had hired a different attorney, is choosing to copy the same legal arguments used by SugarHouse and resubmit their appeal to the Supremes. Do the anti-casino forces have any more arrows left in the quiver? I kinda hope so. I've seen two casinos in major cities that aren't Las Vegas or A.C. - Montreal and New Orleans (waaaay pre-Katrina).

In the case of Montreal, the casino is basically out on an island overlooking the St. Lawrence River. There are plenty of windows, to look out. Nice, relatively classy bars distributed throughout the complex and the building itself is at least a little interesting to look at. It's far away from the other main parts of the city and really doesn't seem to affect the quality of life of the more scenic part of Montreal or its residential neighborhoods. In short, it's not so bad.

New Orleans, however, is the first thing I thought about when the issue of casinos in Philadelphia first came up (A.C. was second). It's a fantastic example of what can go wrong. Granted, this is all from a tourists perspective so I have no economic numbers to back it up. The part of town surrounding the casino was totally dead and somewhat craptastic. In fact, the only reason I ended up there was so that I could get directions away from there. Even pre-Katrina, the rest of New Orleans, aside from a few nicer areas (Bourbon Street, the Garden District) seemed not to be feeling the uplifting effects of all those "jobs" and all the tax revenue that the casino was producing. Judging from many other statistical indicators, the state of Louisiana wasn't getting all that much out it either. It makes you wonder, how bad off would it be without them? I ended up linking casinos with seediness, lack of class, and exploitation. We're not talking James Bond in a white dinner jacket ordering vodka martinis. More like a dimly lit room filled with people with bad teeth in sweat suits pumping nickels into a slot machine. But hey, that's just one guy's hopeful vision.

Now, if I were a betting man, I'd say that the odds are that Philadelphia would end up more with the New Orleans experience than the Montreal experience. After all, Canada has had the great idea of providing health care to their citizens for years and we haven't gotten around to copying that. What makes me believe that we could possibly copy their ideas when it comes to casino site selection and design?

On January 7th, this all falls into the lap of the next mayor, especially since the current mayor has been sold on this casino thing, pretty much since the beginning. It'll be up to him to convince a governor who has been championing casino revenue since he was mayor, that maybe we can put these things down in the swamps by the airport where the strip clubs are. If people really want to pull the one-armed bandit, I'm sure they'll find a way there.

Well, folks, any reactions to the op-ed in today's Inquirer by one Mr. Michael Nutter? He's said all along that the perfect place for his primary opponents would be exactly where they were at the time - Brady and Fattah in the majority in Congress, Evans in the majority in the State House and Knox with more money than a majority of the rest of us.

If you're a Nutter supporter, are you unhappy that he went out of his way to jump to the chairman's defense, especially given all of the "new day" rhetoric that he's been using so often at events like the Great Expectations convention? Or are you confident that Nutter can keep the "patronage is good" side of Brady in check while exploiting the congressman's clout in DC by giving him this type of public praise?

Who was this op-ed intended to reach? Brady and his supporters? Or was it an attempt to convince Nutter's supporters that the "new day" can still dawn with Brady around?

What's the first thing that could happen that would convince you that the old way of doing things - getting services out of the city by calling a committeeman or ward leader, choosing elected officials based on service to party rather than qualifications and service to the community - are over?

Fire away in the comments.

(edited to add) YPP started a similar discussion based on this op-ed. There are plenty of good comments that attempt to interpret Nutter's motives and Brady's potential reaction.

At least one supporter of the Philadelphia Police Department has seen fit to use the pages of the Daily News to throw down the gauntlet for new commissioner Ramsey:

SO WE HAVE a mayor who thinks we have to go outside to find a qualified person to run the police department.

Talk to the FOP president before you make the decisions like you did in Washington. We have a strong contract and changes have to be negptiated (sic), and we also have one of the best arbitration records. So, if the city doesn't mind paying out a lot of money, then they will let you make any the changes you want - but remember, this is a civil-service town, something that guy from New York couldn't understand when he was commissioner.

Setting aside the misspellings, grammatical errors and ambiguous "they" that keeps on cropping up, I'm wondering how, if the commissioner can only appoint x number of deputies, he would clear out the "hangers-on." And if the letter writer emphasizes the point that this is a "civil-service town" why would he recommend something that goes against civil-service protocol?

It's not clear whether the letter writer is a cop himself, but it is an indication of what Chief Ramsey can expect.

Don't we all wish we could be mayor for a day? Yes, if I could have one day of his salary and he makes $365 million per year. And if that day happened to be Game 7 of a Phillies-Yankees World Series and I could use his box at Citizen's Bank Park.

Anyway, the kids in today's featured video have much more practical ideas for what they would do with their newfound, albeit temporary, power. My favorite idea: free ice cream on Saturdays. When asked by the woman in the video, apparently some sort of caretaker or recreation organizer, if that would make a brighter future, the little boy who suggested said replied yes without hesitation.

This is my favorite video so far. What can I say? The kids are cute. They keep saying "President" when they mean "Mayor." And they like to play baseball. It's a very simple film. A group of very young kids, probably 6-8 years old, are basically asked what they want the next mayor to do for them. The film makers also talk to a few adults who seem to realize just. how. important. it is for the future of the city (for the country even) for these kids to be raised right and to have as many opportunities as possible. A young woman asks how the kids can have any hope if the adults in their lives don't have any. An older woman very bluntly says that she's "on her way out" and the kids are "on their way in." She fears for what they'll become if they just spend their time on the corner and wonders how many of them won't even live to see their 21st birthday.

And that's what I found most compelling. To realize that as I watch these little kids - so happy, having so much fun, just enjoying life - that, statistically, at least one of them, if not more, could be dead in ten years. No... will be dead in ten years.

Meanwhile, a middle-age woman takes charge of these children, never letting them get away with their president/mayor mix up and holding them accountable for coming up with good suggestions. She's tough but she's a good teacher. She takes them to the field to play softball. For at least a day, the grim reality of their possible future is of no concern. For at least a day, each of them is a potential major league baseball player or a college professor or ... a mayor. Make that... President.

Click on continue reading to check out the film by Alison Crouse, with Tracy Periera and Mee-Lin Youk; all of Philadelphia. Crouse is an MFA film student at Temple as is Pereira. Mee-Lin Youk is an urban spoken word artist, whose work, I assume provides the background narrative to this film.

It's 10 minutes long so give yourself some time.

Heard in the Hall continues the discussion about yesterday's op-ed by Mayor-elect Nutter in support of Congressman and Party Chairman Bob Brady. Here's the interesting tidbit that I didn't know before:

Heard in the Hall hears that Brady asked Nutter to write the op-ed, and Nutter acquiesced.

It kind of gives me a new respect for Brady in that I never would have expected him to pay much attention or care about what the Inquirer editorial board had to say about him. In fact, I think he said as much when he sat down with them during their endorsement meeting before the primary. Something to the effect of... I know I'm not going to get this endorsement anyway. It's interesting that he'd actually (a) care and (b) ask Nutter to step in on his behalf. Does his think that the challenge he could be facing next spring is actually that serious?

Dan U-A at Young Philly Politics decided to start up a whole new thread to take up the discussion, focusing on the part of the op-ed that, I have to admit, I must have missed when I read it the first time:

Both as a member of Congress and as head of the city's Democratic Party...

I understand why Nutter would want to curry favor with a Congressman who is poised to exercise a good amount of clout with his new committee chairmanship, but I wonder what point he was trying to make by specifically pointing out Brady's role with the party - the side of Brady with which most progressives and "reformers" in this town have a problem. In fact, YPP contributor Ray Murphy started yet another thread to question whether Nutter has any plan to reform the way politics (i.e. the Democratic party) works in this town.

Both of these threads seem to have about equal numbers of comments in support of Nutter's op-ed as they do concerns about the message he's sending. We tend to forget that it was a mere 15 or 16 months ago that Nutter was a maverick councilman with very little political support and "no natural constituency" from which to draw power. Just because he's come so far so fast doesn't mean he can just clear everyone out before he even officially takes office. He'll need a few concrete accomplishments under his belt to build up enough support for his re-election before he can even consider ruffling the feathers of "the Party."

Let's see where things are in about a year and half, after the new city worker contracts are negotiated, after we have a clearer picture of where city finances are heading, and after we can see whether he's succeeded in bringing down the murder rate.

Finally, one of our readers sent me an email wondering if Nutter plans on keeping his position as a ward leader and also asked when was the last time a sitting mayor was also a ward leader. I guessed Jim Tate but I don't know for sure. Any ideas folks?

I know we like to focus on issues around here but sometimes I just can't dabbling in the politics from time to time.

As economists are wont to do, we must make an assumption.

First, we assume a time machine...

A couple of minutes ago I heard an interesting tidbit on Talk of the Nation (on WHYY 90.9 on your FM dial). David Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool, mentioned that when Ben Franklin died, he had left a tidy some of money to the city of Philadelphia. Gardner, using this to illustrate the amazing phenomenon of compounding interest, said that if the city had just invested the money and not touched it, allowing it to compound annually at an average rate of 10 percent, Philadelphia would now have more than enough money to "buy the entire United States of America." Hence, the power of compounding interest.

And, of course, since I was curious about how much money that might be, I found on Wikipedia (therefore, it must be true!) that Franklin had bequeathed about 1000 pounds (about $4400) each to Philadelphia and Boston:

As of 1990, more than $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin's Philadelphia trust, which had loaned the money to local residents. From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. When the trust came due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school students.

I searched "compound interest calculator" and using the first one I found, plugged in $4400 for 215 years at a 10% rate compounded annually. That gives us a grand total of:

$3,490,438,461,210.14

That's nearly $3.5 trillion.

Pretty sure we could cover that pension fund imbalance... and pave Market Street with gold.

Just something to think about.

Daily News and Inquirer have coverage about Mayor-elect Nutter's decision to extend campaign finance rules to the non-profits that are overseeing the funding for his transition and inaugural festivities.

From the Inky:

Nutter had committed to generating those dollars by voluntarily adhering to the same donor caps that restricted his campaign fund-raising. Those limited individuals to giving up to $5,000, and businesses and political committees up to $20,000.

Richard Hayden, a top adviser to Nutter, said yesterday that the mayor-elect had agreed to accept the board's recommendation.

Come to think of it, I always found it a little odd that the Knox-induced doubling of the limits continued to apply after the primary.

So, since Colbert's not around to do it, Tip Of The Hat to Michael Nutter for continuing to walk the walk on the spirit of the fund raising rules.

Phil Bradshaw, Sean Maher, and Wayne Forchic bring us today's film, "Hopes and Fears." Bradshaw's biography on the Great Expectations website says that he "is inspired by the little things that often go unnoticed" and it shows in many of the shots that appear in this film. The film is visually rich, from a brilliantly shot opening of the Ben Franklin Bridge in what appears to be an early morning haze to an ironic shot about 2:25 in of a sink hole that appears to have become the neighborhood trash can. (My favorite shot.)

Act I lays out the hopes. Among them, judging from the range of interview subjects, is the belief that our diverse, multicultural city provides a vitality that we can draw on to solve many of the city's problems. "We are a city neighborhoods," says one trendy-looking young adult. And in those neighborhoods lie our strengths. Yes, sometimes there's "attytood" that comes with tension between these neighborhoods. But for the most part it's the same attitude that says, he's my brother. I can fight with him but I'll be damned if I'm going to let some outside beat him up.

Act II moves to the fears - all of the ones that we've heard so much about. Bad schools. Crime. People moving on up and leaving the neighborhood behind, not giving back.

Act III talks about the future through the lens of the past. One woman makes an observation about the fact that the city has a higher percentage of native born people than any other city. The words she chooses belie the positive and negative attributes to this statistic - "if your from Philadelphia and your parents are from Philadelphia, you have slim to no chance of ever leaving Philadelphia." The smile on her face leads you to believe that this is a good thing, no matter how much her words seem to connote a fate worse than death. That slim chance happens because people choose to stay, not because they can't escape. She continues later in the film by saying that while she wants to change the image that outsiders have of Philadelphia, "she doesn't want to do too good of job" lest we have to share this gem of a city with everyone else.

There's such a passion represented by each of the people in this film. "If we give up on our city, who else is going to come to fight for it?" asks one woman who grew up somewhere else and has since found a home here.

And that's why, no matter how many times the baseball team falls short, we turn out the following year on Opening Day believing we can win it all. That's why, no matter what a previous mayor has done, we believe that the next one can lead us to glory, because we'll never give up the fight.

Click on "Continue Reading" to check out the film. Feel free to comment about it and I encourage you to share those comments over on the Great Expectations page about this film.

I'm curious about the level of interest among readers of this blog and users of thenextmayor.com in all things "Pennsylvania Society." Do you care?

Discuss in the comments.

At least one good thing came from the weekend: more discussion about Nutter and his plans (or lack of, depending on whom you ask) for reforming Philly's Democratic party.

Philadelphia has long been known as a "union town" - a distinction that has had its costs and its benefits. On the one hand, if you are a low-skilled worker with a job as a janitor or laborer, you could still earn a decent living and receive good benefits due to the power of your union. On the other hand, if you are a developer or a manufacturer, you have often been faced with the choice of paying more for labor or concentrating your operation in a lower cost, non-union friendly place. Decades ago, that meant moving to the suburbs or down south. Now it means India and China.

The overall effect on the city is difficult to judge. Yes, we are less beset by the difficulties of the working poor who perform many of the service industry jobs that are available here because they are able to earn a decent living and get health care. But, it is also possible that many jobs that would have been higher paying otherwise have left the city because of the strength of the unions.

Whatever their effect in the past, it seems clear now that labor unions are at a cross roads. While their political power in Philly is still formidable when it comes to getting huge amounts of votes for Democratic candidates in statewide or national races, it doesn't seem to have meant a whole lot in local races as evidenced by the results of the mayoral primary.

Judging from the "Comments" section of any Daily News or Inquirer story that deals with either the construction trades unions or the municipal workers unions, it seems that the public image of organized labor is taking a beating.

And now, judging from an action taken by City Council last week and seemingly approved by Mayor-elect Nutter, the unions may be losing their exclusive hold on public works construction projects. This prompted Inquirer reporter George Anastasia to offer a news analysis that raised these very questions about organized labor's power.

But where does this leave us? Are we better off if Philadelphia ceases to be a "union town" because it would mean that more lower income people without college degrees would have a greater shot at some of these higher paying construction jobs? Or are the jobs just higher paying because of the power of the unions? Simple economics tells us that if labor unions are removed from the equation and the supply of usable labor is no longer kept artificially low by law and by union strength, then the price of that labor will also decrease (given no change in labor demand). Yes, there may be more jobs but at what cost?

The unionized workforce requirements could be serving as a good way to transfer wealth from the very rich to the middle and working class in a way that's more palatable to conservatives than welfare payments and high taxes. Without union strength, are we just looking at a Philadelphia where the gap between rich and poor grows wider?

In Sunday's Philadelphia Tribune, where Council's actions were applauded in an editorial, Councilman Goode is quoted offering a compromise solution to attempt to diversify the unions:

[Goode] also floated another idea, a more long-term concept, of creating other unions that are more inclusive.

“[We could] create competition by creating new labor unions that better mirror the make up Philadelphia,” he said.

Related question... why have the building trades unions always been so reluctant to release any data about the racial make up of their memberships? The Tribune has an answer for that.

Anyway, before anyone starts to celebrate what may be a decline in union influence in Philadelphia, let's remember what things were like before organized labor came along and think just how easily the situation could go back to that.

We're nearing the end on our series of discussions about the wonderful finalists for the Great Expectations "Hopes and Fears" film competition. Again, my thanks to the Great Expectations project for partnering up with the Greater Philadelphia Film office to sponsor this wonderful event. The films that have been produced from this venture have all been great. I'd also like to thank them again for allowing the videos to be embedded in other blogs so that all of us who are interested in a better Philadelphia can share them and discuss them.

Today's topic came in second in their contest. "What is Violence" is by a young film maker from North Philadelphia named Hamid Floyd. Hamid is a student at Temple majoring in Broadcast Telecommunications. If you check out his bio on the Great Expectations page, you'll see a quote that can describe the plight of just about any young person who has a passion for anything:

In my neighborhood of North Philadelphia, there are no words to describe how hard it is to find a young person interested something serious, not to mention video, and if I do find someone, it’s only for in front of the screen. So when I make a film, I am the editor, director, producer, advertiser, camera man, and usually the script writer. This feat is never easy.

It's so true and the same could be said of someone who's interested in radio or owning a small business or putting together a sports team. As soon as the hard work has to start, you lose most of your help. A lot of folks are interested in film until they realize that not everyone gets to be Brad Pitt. There's a lot of behind the scenes work that needs to be done and while it helps to have a big team of folks to work on it, Hamid's film shows what can be done by one dedicated, passionate individual.

But, enough about the process, let's take a look at the product, which, as usual, is available after the jump. It's one of the longer ones so give yourself a good, solid, uninterrupted 15 minutes so you can really take it in. And, again as usual, please feel free to comment here about the film and consider copying your comments to the film's Great Expectations page.

Since he's a young film maker compared to the other participants in this contest, it's tough to judge Floyd's work through the same criteria. Of course he's going to make some mistakes but the mistakes come from trying new techniques and new effects, some of which he'll learn don't work as well as others could. That said, the film is deeply personal to Floyd, as he tells his own story, his own experience with violence. A story that he himself acknowledges isn't as bad as some others simply by virtue of his still being around to tell it.

Floyd narrates over a dramatization of a beating that he received at the hands of a group of young men. Unfortunately, his choices for lighting and the filters he uses for dramatic effect don't translate well into the medium of web video, which always seems to darken video a little too much. This renders the video pretty much unwatchable and leaves the viewer to depend on the audio and the fleeting images of a punch or a kick to understand what's going on. The parts that can be seen make liberal use of slow motion and blur effects to convey the experience of one who is in the midst of a violent encounter. Time slows down and the victim, who's perception of the incident while it's happening is hazy at best, wonders if it will ever end.

After telling his story, Floyd then interviews several people from in and around his neighborhood, a place where violent crime is a regular occurrence, all of whom seem to have little in the way of answers for this scourge. In their voices and in their words, you get a sense that hope is very slowly slipping away. Ultimately, the answer to the question posed in the title of Floyd's film seems to be that violence is slow deterioration of a people and their community until any thought of a better way is extinguished.

One can hope that 8 years from now, when an open seat in the mayor's office brings together a project such as this again, that violence is a topic only explored in films about the past.

Click on "Continue Reading" to check out the film.

Dan Rubin's column today featured a Philly transplant who learned a little something about some Philadelphians' favorite past time - littering:

Have you ever wondered what, if anything, runs through the mind of a kid who walks down the street jettisoning candy wrappers and soda cans as though he's a spacecraft reentering the atmosphere?

She and some other annoyed activists decided to ask 27 kids, ages 6 to 19, about their attitudes toward trash, hoping the playground questionnaire would open a window into underlying issues - how they feel about themselves, whether they think what they do has any impact on those around them.

Some of the answers she were downright scary:

Asked 'What's the most important thing in your life?' one 11-year-old answered "blowing stuff up," "weapons" and "mom" - in that order.

Another, asked how to prevent others from littering in his neighborhood, replied, "kill people." It's "insulting," he wrote.

She's doing something on a small scale that I wish could be done citywide. Every time I see someone throw litter on the ground, I don't necessarily feel any anger as much as I am curious. I want to know why they did it. Who, in that person's life, taught them that it was ok simply to throw their trash on the ground? Once I found that out, I'd want to find that person and ask them where they got their attitude about litter.

Until we have an idea of why people toss their trash on the ground in the first place, we're never really going to be able to solve the problem. For every "citywide clean up," neighborhood activist, or just regular joe who picks up a piece of trash that's not his, there's five or ten people who don't give a second thought about pitching a cigarette butt, soda bottle or newspaper onto the sidewalk.

Kudos to Stephanie Kruel. When she's done surveying Point Breeze, I hope she can move on to the rest of the city.

When I read about some of the things that go on in City Council, like potentially banning a Wawa from opening within 1000 ft. of any residence, I'm reminded of the DJ 3000 and its uncanny ability to "keep up with the news" when it said, "Those clowns in congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns."

Mr. Luigi, a regular poster over YPP, wrote yesterday about what seems to be a misguided attempt by City Council to rein in those infamous Stop-and-Go's that have brought down many a neighborhood.

My very preliminary reading of this bill seems to fall in line with many of the responses to Mr. Luigi's post, namely, that City Council is using a sledge hammer to crack a nut. Only, this sledge hammer has the added force to allow City Council members even more power over what kind of businesses can and can not open in their districts.

We all know where this goes. How long will it be before Philly Blog is inundated with stories of wannabe coffee shop owners who could not get the proper variance to open their store because some friend of a relative of a City Council person already has a coffee shop and is afraid of the competition?

Does anyone have a different reading of this bill?

We've heard that Charles Ramsey -- who Nutter has designated as his chosen police chief, but who, like Nutter is definitely not on the job yet -- may be headed to Philadelphia murder scene right now.

Very, very interesting. Is he that much of a take-charge guy, or could this be something that has to do with the BBC crew that's also in town right now, doing something on gun violence?

If you've even been the least bit interested in the work I've been doing since the Friday before last to review each of the finalists of the Great Expectations Film "Hopes and Fears" Film contest, then you've undoubtedly seen the winner already. If you attended the Citizen's Convention the Sunday before last, you saw it there as well.

"Prayer for Philadelphia" by Richard Power Hoffman was the Grand Prize winner, undoubtedly because it is quite an achievement in short film making. Hoffman uses a variant of stop motion photography with a lot of quick zooms and pans to challenge the viewer to see Philadelphia in a way that they don't often view it - thoughtfully, artistically and in fine detail. At one point he drills down to a single fleck of pebble in sidewalk to drive home his point that in the city, in all of its gritty glory, is ingrained into its residents. Why else would they choose to live here?

That's the question that Hoffman seeks to answer. Why would we choose to live in a city that seems to revel in its position in the shadow of New York and root for the team with the most losses in major league history? If we can find the answer to that question, then we can possibly tap into it - whatever "it" is - and use it to revitalize and rebuild the city to a place of glory.

Hoffman also employs a haunting soundtrack that pulses throughout the film to represent the beating heart of city that refuses to die. The narration is effective and the background narration with its John Facenda-like quality pulls the viewer in and forces us to listen to his every word.

Clearly, Hoffman is skilled with his editing and apparently, like his "Fridays at the Farm," he's used this style on other films. This type of creativity and the very fact that techniques like this exist are what make me want to go to film school to broaden my knowledge of the medium beyond my self-taught and very basic Final Cut skills.

As cool as the film is, I still think that I'd go with "Mayor for a Day" as my choice for winner. While "Prayer" is the crafted more finely than any of the others, the raw emotion of "Mayor" and the films ability to connect viewers of all different backgrounds with the hopes and fears of members of the most vulnerable population in the city set it apart.

Click on "Continue Reading" to check it out and feel free to leave some comments here and at the film's Great Expectations page.

Thanks for taking part in this cinematic journey. Let's hope that Great Expectations and/or the Greater Philadelphia Film Office does this again next year!

I've tried several times to explain that "stop and frisk," the three word phrase that most media have used to summarize the entire Nutter crime plan, is much more than its detractors have tried to portray it. So many times, in fact, that I don't feel like linking to all of them.

Today, in the Daily Pennsylvanian, Professor Lawrence Sherman, who has studied the deployment of targeted gun patrols, explains why it can work and be consistent with civil rights. In fact, if practiced as its supposed to be, it can actually aid in the relationship between the police force and the residents of the city's most crime-plagued neighborhoods. Sherman points out that the recent murder of police officer Chuck Cassidy and the intense search that followed (including many stops that might push the constitutionally accept "Terry stop" criteria) should not be taken as examples of what a properly executed strategy would look like.

Sherman:

In the aftermath of the tragic murder of Philadelphia police officer Chuck Cassidy, hundreds of Philadelphia police looked for a young black male suspect in high-crime areas. Before the confessed killer was found in Miami, many observers alleged that police conducted illegal searches without adequate reason to suspect the persons searched. Opponents of stop and frisk cited that as evidence of the risks of such a policy.

No complaints of misuse surfaced in any of these tests. Under proper guidance, the Philadelphia police are more than capable of training such units to operate legally and politely.

The cops who would carry out this tactic in specifically targeted zones would be carefully selected, most likely through a rigorous screening process to determine whether they are likely to operate "legally and politely," and highly trained. They would strive to become familiar and trusted faces within the targeted communities and they would explain what they are trying to do and try to allay any concerns that law abiding residents may have.

Sherman continues his op-ed with some excellent points about targeting the resources of Philadelphia's law enforcement system (the "Law"and the "Order" duhn duhn) towards the people most likely to commit the crimes.

Sherman again:

The idea of "triage" in criminal justice resources has even broader implications. Just as the National Academy of Science report found policing to be more effective when focused on a few "hot spots" of crime rather than spreading police evenly across a city, so to could the entire criminal justice system take the same approach. Prosecution, trial preparation and sentencing could all emphasize the cases that pose the greatest harm to the public.

Philadelphia could reduce both crime and taxes with fewer people in prison.

In other words, put the police where the crime is most likely to happen and focus the prosecutors on the people most likely to commit the crimes again if they happen to go free.

The guy's pretty damn smart. Let's hope someone in City Hall puts him on speed dial.

The Nutter transition team sent out a media advisory a while ago announcing that tomorrow the mayor-elect would be naming his new Managing Director. This one was a little different in that it specifically stated that the document was for "planning purposes only" and that the "INFORMATION EMBARGOED UNTIL PRESS CONFERENCE." I took that to mean they didn't want anyone talking about the fact that Nutter would be making the announcement.

Silly, newbie "journalist." Since Heard in the Hall already announced it, I guess I misunderstood.

Place your bets, folks. Who will it be? So far Nutter has mixed up his appointments with folks who have been in city government before and folks from outside of city government. In an almost Lincoln-esque move he even appointed a supporter of one of his rivals to be his Chief of Staff? Will he go that route and pick Jonathan Saidel as Managing Director?

Maybe he'll go with experience. Could Phil Goldsmith be making a comeback or did the mayor-elect convince one of his more talented City Council At-Large colleagues to join him in the administration?

Perhaps we're looking at someone completely different who has experience running a business or organization that comes close to the size of the City of Philadelphia. Judging from the salaries of the CEOs of Philadelphia's largest businesses, any one of them could take a few years off and probably be pretty financially secure.

Trivia question. Can you name the last Managing Director to hold the job for every day of his boss's 8 years as mayor?

(edited to add)
I see that in the 9 minutes it took me to type this post, Wendy scooped me with the announcement. See next post.

Tomorrow at 11 a.m.

From today's Inquirer:

The mayor-elect told the crowd that he had come to his decision after talking several times with the Democratic presidential front-runner and determining that "her priorities are the right priorities for Philadelphia."

"It's time for cities and metropolitan areas to take their prominent place in America again," he declared.

At this point, it seems that the choice of whom to endorse comes down to either Clinton or Obama for most major political figures. Nutter has decided to throw in for Clinton. Considering that he's gone so far as to appoint supporters of his primary rivals to high level posts in his administration, I think it's unlikely that Nutter chose not to endorse Obama because of his support for Fattah in the primary. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, it appears that he simply chose Clinton because he thinks she's the better candidate.

Leaving aside the obvious point that the endorsement of the mayor-elect of Philadelphia is unlikely to make much difference in the outcome given the lateness of Pennsylvania primary, do you think this was a smart, savvy move? If Obama is able to pull off the improbable win, much like a certain 5th place candidate was able to do in last May's mayoral primary, is Philadelphia now in a bad spot with the next President? Or would it not matter given that Obama's background in another big city (Chicago) makes him naturally inclined to paying special attention to cities?

So many rhetorical questions, so little time. Discuss.

Oh, and stay tuned for video from Nutter's Managing Director announcement. (The answer to the trivia question I raised yesterday is in the comments section of this post.)

There's going to be one in City Hall at least.

Dr. Camille Cates Barnett will be the new Managing Director of the City of Philadelphia. I'll have video a little later but for now, here are some of the highlights of her biography:

She is currently Strategic Consulting Director for Public Financial Management (yes, the same PFM that was founded by Sam Katz and others but according to Nutter there's no connection with Katz) in their Washington DC office. One of her consulting jobs while at PFM was working with the City of New Orleans.

She's worked in Grand Rapids, MI, Sunnyvale, CA and Houston, Dallas and Austin, TX. She was City Manager in Austin.

Dr. Barnett went from their to the Center for International Development at the Research Triangle in North Carolina where she "advised governments around the world on transferable, city government innovations."

While in North Carolina she got a call from the folks in Washington DC and was asked to serve as that city's Chief Management Officer until DC completed a transition to home rule.

She has a Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Southern California.

Nutter said that he first met Dr. Barnett at a National League of Cities conference at which she was giving a presentation on budgeting based on outcomes.

Video and some more of my thoughts (as if you're waiting for them with bated breath) later today. I'll also be keeping an eye out for what WHYY and some of the other news outlets get as reactions to this selection. For now, have at it in the comments.

While I'm piecing together the video from the Managing Director announcement, I figured I'd share with you a very lightly edited piece that features the mayor-elect taking questions about the Convention Center issue.

For background on this issue, check out the Daily News coverage here and here and Inquirer coverage here, here, and here.

The Daily News also editorialized about it today.

Anyone care to chime in on this issue?

As promised (several hours ago), here are some highlights from today's announcement of Dr. Camille Cates Barnett as the new Managing Director:

Keep the comments coming. I especially love the part where she says, "I'm really good at running things." I guess we'll find out how good she is soon.

Take a quick look at some of the major stories in the news today. Do you see what I see?

Not one. Not two. Not three. But at least four pieces of good news related to local, government-influenced issues. (By that I mean I'm not counting the Sixers' fourth win in a row.)

First, and most important from this blogs perspective, is the mayor-elect's choice for a new Managing Director. (DN, WHYY, Next Mayor video, Inky, Metro, Bulletin)

By all accounts, she's a smart, capable and successful city manager who can claim that she was part of the transformation of Austin, TX into the coolness mecca that it is today. Although, I'd have to give this movie just as much credit. At the press conference yesterday she came across as outgoing, charismatic and focused. Hopefully she can use that to create the kinds of wide-ranging, cultural transformations that it will take to shape up a city government that can be a little resistant to change. Immediately after her hiring, the questions arose about her performance in Washington D.C. and the fact that she left early from her 5-year contract. From the Inky:

It was harder going in Washington, Barnett said. She arrived in late 1997 to become chief management officer, a position newly created by the federal panel then overseeing the city's finances and much of its administration.

Barnett had to contend not only with the federal panel, but with Mayor Marion Barry, whose office had been stripped of much of its power by Congress.

It seems that any time she's left a city, it's been because of the typical friction that would occur between a new administration and holdovers from a previous administration. Hey, if pissing off Marion Barry is the worst thing she's done (oh and there was that contract to a friend from Texas), I'll take that in the deal. It'll be interesting to see how her experience with the civil service systems in other cities, and the municipal unions in those cities, has prepared Dr. Barnett for dealing with this city. Ultimately, any transformational changes that she wants to make will depend on her ability to make changes in personnel, job descriptions, work rules and expectations. Let's check back in a year. (Ok, 18 months since it'll take 6 months for her to get an email address. I keed. I keed.)

At the top of my list of headlines, however, is this one: "Violent crime dips in Phila." Yes, we're still on our way to about 400 murders for the year, which is way above the most recent low of 288. But overall, we have a chance to have fewer total violent crimes this year than in 2000 - Street's first year in office. At least the numbers are trending downward. Of course, this shouldn't be a sign that the PPD or the next mayor can take it easy and it appears that Nutter realizes this (or else he's still in campaign mode):

Nutter said that the numbers were encouraging, and that his new police commissioner, Charles H. Ramsey, would analyze the trends and respond accordingly.

He suggested that the intense public debate about crime during the political campaign had something to do with the drop. "By bringing attention to it, it has helped to sharpen the focus of the police and the administration," he said.

Let's aim for New York's murder rate, about 7 murders per 100,000 people, which has that city on pace for it's lowest murder total since the 1960s. Actually, let me put that in a more positive way. Let's aim for New York's survival rate which is a pretty cool 99,993 non-murdered per 100,000 people.

The School District, after years of taking heat from parent groups and other concerned citizens, is going to practice a little "Community Engagement" in their budget process for next year:

...starting Tuesday, key community groups will meet with district officials to discuss the fiscal 2009 budget.

Then on Jan. 2, interim chief executive Tom Brady will start hosting a blog so people may keep up with the budget process and ask him questions directly.

Could the city government be far behind in involving citizens in its budget process? I can't wait to see Brady's blog. Jasper, I know you'll be a regular contributor there. Right?

Finally, and most shocking of all, PGW doesn't suck as much any more! This is the story which helped to shore up my faith in miracles. I've been a little depressed and stressed lately about the state of local and world affairs but if PGW can begin to get itself out of debt, then that means anything is possible. We should expect soon to see a beautifully developed and well-planned Delaware Waterfront, an end to the war in Iraq, a balanced federal budget, cars that run on hydrogen, and possibly a Phillies World Series championship. Good work PGW! (Now, when I get my gas bill for the past month, am I going to see that I owe $20.5 million?)

Some of you may have been planning on attending the third installment of the "Profiles in Leadership" sponsored by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia. Regretfully, the event has been postponed. Mayor Franklin is a very remarkable woman and has done some great things in Atlanta. I'd encourage anyone who was considering attending on Monday to mark January 15th 2008 on your brand new calendars.

Here is the information from our friends at the Economy League:

Mayor Franklin has had a personal emergency and regrets that she cannot be with us for the America's Great Mayors event on Monday night, December 17th. We have rescheduled for Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at the same time and place. Please advise if you will be able to join us then. If not and you already have paid a fee, we will refund it.

Profiles in Leadership: America's Great Mayors
Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
5:30 Reception, 6 - 7:30 Program
Loews Hotel, 1200 Market Street, Commonwealth Room

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your interest in this event.

I have to admit that I came into the Philadelphia political game relatively recently when I jumped on board a mayoral campaign in early 2003. Readers of this blog know which one but, for full disclosure, I was on the policy staff of the Katz for Mayor campaign. Prior to that, I lived for five years way out in Chester County (literally on a farm) and prior to that I was away in college for four years with summers spent in Northeastern PA. So when I read this piece from last Sunday's Inquirer by George Anastasia (who, ironically, most often writes about the city's organized crime figures), the parts union members swarming the construction site of the Valley Forge Sheraton in 1972 or the Sun Oil protest on west Market Street in 1982, it's history to me, not something I lived through or remember first hand. I do remember the protest in East Falls from a couple years ago but that incident didn't even seem as "rough and tumble" as the "briefcase brigade" that marched on City Hall to protest the freeze in wage tax reductions.

Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up so that readers of this post would have an idea of the perspective that I'm bringing to the latest dust up between some of our elected officials and the leaders of some of the building trades unions over the amount of minority inclusion in (1) the Convention Center expansion work and (2) the unions themselves.

I'm a numbers guy. Anyone who has read this blog knows that I throw around the terms "evidence-based" and "statistically proven" on a regular basis. I'm not a big fan of anecdotal evidence, especially when it comes to determining where my (and your) tax dollars are going or when it comes to judging the overall progress of the city on several of its social goals.

It seems that the tension between the construction unions and several City Council members (including Frank DiCicco and Marian Tasco) comes down to numbers. Council (which is how I'll refer to those who had been pushing the provision to open up the expansion to non-union contractors) wants the numbers and the unions refuse to give them or don't have them. Specifically, they want to know exactly how many members are in each union and of them, how many can be classified as minorities.

On the other hand, those who are pushing for minority inclusion - both on public works projects and in the unions in general - also don't have numbers to prove that people of color are being systematically excluded from the building trades. They have plenty of examples of specific persons being excluded, the most egregious of which is this horrible story about Paul Solomon, the black construction worker referred to in Elmer Smith's column today:

Gillespie, who runs the Building and Construction Trades Council, landed on City Council's last nerve a week ago with his testimony at a hearing on minority inclusion in the Convention Center expansion project. His cavalier dismissal of Council members' concerns did more to unify them than a chance to vote themselves a pay raise.

"His response about the black worker was essentially that he has to get his own job.

Many Council members have also referred to construction sites that don't "look like" the racial make up of the city or job sites with a lot of "New Jersey license plates." The evidence is real - we are talking about real people who are being left out or allowed in - but since it's anecdotal, we don't know the true extent of the exclusion.

I have no doubt that they're are plenty of examples of minority exclusion on public and private sector jobs. Without hard numbers, on either side, we'll never know the whole story and therefore we won't be able to move forward. Even if the unions pledge to do everything that Council wants and even if contractors promise to include more minority workers on public works projects, we'll never be able to tell if they are in compliance without hard numbers.

So why don't we count?

City Council, with the approval and support of the mayor, should send out a "compliance officer" (from L&I or MBEC - if that agency still exists in a few months) to count, literally, the number of people of color on a job site on any given day. Of course, this wouldn't be a one time deal since numbers can swing wildly depending on the type of work being done on a particular day. The compliance officer would show up, announced, two or three times a month throughout the duration of the project and count all of the workers. He or she would report back to Council on a regular basis with those numbers.

At this point, the major question is less about who owns the contracting and subcontracting firms. Those numbers can be gamed pretty easily. The most important thing now is determining which workers are on the job, receiving the good pay and benefits that come with the work. It's pretty hard to fake a persons skin color or game the system if the compliance officer shows up at random times several times per month.

If the job site is in compliance, great. The work is being done by a diverse force of union workers who are getting the high wages and good benefits that come from union representation. If the numbers still aren't working, then Council can take actions necessary to get more minorities included.

But until we know numbers, we don't know the whole story.

You may have missed this interesting take on the whole City Council v. Unions re: Convention Center saga since it ran in Saturday's paper and has since been pushed pretty far down the headlines cue over at the Inquirer's website.

Marcia Gelbart of the Inquirer calls Council to task for possible violation of the "Sunshine Act", which, as summed by Gelbart, "prohibits a quorum from meeting privately to discuss public policy or take official action." It seems that Council may have done just that, meeting behind closed doors throughout the night before settling on a solution that, according to the Daily News (also on Saturday):

rescinded its invitation to nonunion firms to work on the project but imposed new demands for diversity on the unions.

Under legislation given preliminary approval Thursday, unions will have to reveal the racial composition of their membership and commit to long-term diversity plans subject to City Council's approval if they want to work on the project.

So Council drops their threat to open the Convention Center expansion to non-union labor in exchange for getting the unions to, as I said on Friday, "show me numbers."

Anyway, Gelbart's story is also the source of my Quote Of The Day (or QOTD for short) from Councilman W. Wilson Goode, who more often than not is a champion of ethics, good government and a very progressive agenda. Apparently, either the late night at work or the end result of the night had Goode feeling pretty frustrated when he told Gelbart:

But Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. said, "To me, most of the discussion yesterday was about a discussion for how you break a stalemate in a situation like this. And at some point, what you get to is people agreeing on how they are going to agree, not necessarily what they are agreeing on."

That said, he added: "I don't care about the Sunshine Law. I don't know who cares about the Sunshine Law, and I'm not sure whether it was broken or not."

I guess my old nickname for him, Mr. Sunshine, no longer applies. Or, to borrow a phrase from his fellow Council member, perhaps he was just "Sunshine'd out."

How else can you explain why he blatantly threw down the gauntlet yesterday at the feet of the anti-casino advocates?

Some of the more choice quotes:

To hear some casino opponents tell it, bringing gambling to Philadelphia is evil, corrupt, possibly even fattening. (geez... and that's the first line. I'm sure that one was good for a bout 150 emails)

This is nuts. As in crazy. As in wrong.

They will bring thousands of new jobs and millions of dollars into the city. They will result in the largest single tax cut in the city's history, reducing the dreaded wage tax to below - maybe well below - 4 percent. (these lines are the ones that probably got him emails with "Dear Mr. Casino Spokesperson," in the subject line.)

As to the claim that casinos will destroy adjoining neighborhoods, I doubt it. When those neighborhoods were built, they were set cheek by jowl with an overcrowded waterfront, filled to the brim with all sorts of traffic, bustle and hustle. In fact, it's only been in recent years that we have had an underused (read: mostly empty) riverfront. They will survive.

I have a feeling that most of the replies to this point tried to explain that there's a difference between "then" and "now". Back then, the factories, shipyards and other "bustle and hustle" are exactly what attracted the people who built the houses and moved into those neighborhoods. Those residents moved there because they wanted to be near to the major sources of employment. The businesses were there first and the neighbors moved in around them. They had a choice.

Now, forty or fifty years later, the folks who live in those houses probably moved there for a variety of reasons, some of which may have been the potential of the waterfront if it were ever developed strategically and a focus on opening up river access. Since many of them have stuck it out through all of those years when nothing was happening on the waterfront they feel, perhaps rightly, that they deserve a say in what happens with that area. The way the process has worked, however, they have had no choice.

Check that, their choice now is live within 300 feet of a casino with its potential for crowds, noise, traffic, vice etc. or move out. Some choice.

Ferrick did make some great points that we should keep in mind:

If we were to get a new $700-million-a-year business in the city, I wish it would make ships or steel, railroad cars or saws, hats or men's suits or maybe even locomotives.

This is the 21st century. The city has staked its future on the service economy and on tourism. And casinos are service industries that draw tourists.

It's just unfortunate that the only service economy industry that we can lure, to the riverfront or otherwise, seems to be gambling.

Ferrick is also correct in pointing out who, from the perspective of the anti-casino forces, really failed in this case - their local state government delegation:

Opponents further argue that citizens had no voice in the decision to create casinos, or in the choice of their location. Hence, the process violates the principles of democracy. That is untrue.

They must have missed the last 15 years of conversations about gambling in Philly, where the waterfront was always considered the prime location.

Ferrick's work this weekend can truly be considered "provocative." I'd love to know how many emails it provoked.

(Full disclosure: I live in one of the neighborhoods that is adjacent to one of the affected neighborhoods but I haven't staked out a personal position either way about these casinos slots parlors. I'd love them if they could be designed and built so that they fit seamlessly into a planning scheme that conforms with the work of the Civic Vision for the Central Delaware, pedestrian friendly, accessible primarily by mass transit, situated on plots that extend the street grid, plenty of open access to the waterfront, hidden parking where necessary, etc. I'd also be fine with them if everyone in the casinos looked and dress like this. Since neither of those is likely to happen and since casinos slots parlors can be a little less than "classy," I am less than optimistic about what could happen to the character of the city and the waterfront.)

Just got my daily update from the Philadelphia Business Journal and saw this story, which oddly enough, hasn't appeared on Philly.com yet:

A Philadelphia woman was charged Monday with extorting more than $5,000 in cash and a cell phone while working for the city of Philadelphia and City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller.

Pinkett faces a maximum of 20 years imprisonment, three years supervised release and a $250,000 fine.

Judging by a Google News search of the woman's name, it doesn't seem like this story is hot enough to drive internet traffic just yet. I guess everyone else is too busy tripping over themselves to cover every angle of a crime allegedly perpetrated by someone whose salary isn't paid for by my tax dollars.

Everyone except CBS 3, that is.

Priceless.

Today's edition of the Nutter news watch features the mayor-elect's ability to create funding for the public schools out of... well... nothing.

Let me 'splain. Just as I was about to write yet another blog post about everyone's favorite state-run, city agency and their inability not just to come up with this year's long-promised $10 million for the School District, but also falling woefully short of the $25 million that they're supposed to deliver to the city, the mayor-elect steps in and, voila, "$2.65 million short" of its obligations to the city becomes "$1.25 million" in excess, which goes to the School District.

Sure, it's not $10 million but considering that the PPA has given exactly $0 to the School District since an accounting error in 2004 resulted in a $4 million payment, it's a start. (I'm reminded of Indiana Jones's classic line: "Sallah, I said *no* camels. That's *five* camels. Can't you count?")

As reported on WHYY about an hour ago:

Philadelphia's public schools got an early Christmas present from the Philadelphia Parking Authority today. Authority officials say that after some creative accounting and budget cutting, they'll be able to contribute more than $26 million to the City of Philadelphia, including 1.25 million for the school district. Mayor Elect Michael Nutter announced the decision at the authority's monthly board meeting today. He praised the school advocates in attendance for keeping the pressure on the authority, but he also reminded them that the real funding battle is in Harrisburg.

Advocates have been pushing Parking Authority officials for months to make good on a longstanding promise to help fund public schools. The agency's revenues and staff have doubled in the five years, but this is its first financial contribution to the school district since 2004. Nutter says he expects to improve the city's working relationship with the authority in order to keep those contributions coming in 2009 and beyond.

Quite an amazing turnaround. Now if only I could use some creative accounting to get my credit balance to a positive $25 million.

Was it UPS that used to have the slogan "We do more before 10 am than most people do all day" before "What can Brown do for you?"

Anyway, the Nutter-elect continued his march towards inauguration with a couple of high-profile appearances, including one pretty big victory.

As we wrote about yesterday, Nutter, teaming up with Dwight Evans and a whole lot of pitchfork holding, torch waving parents, gently nudged the Parking Authority into pitching in a little cash for the School District for this year and next. Extensive coverage of the win, including a quote from PPA Executive Director Vince Fenerty that seems to be a pretty thinly veiled shot at the current administration can be found in the DN, Inky, Bulletin, Tribune, Metro and KYW. (WHYY radio report coming later).

The Fenerty quote, from the Inky version, is, "I see it continuing to go up under the Nutter administration, and you can quote me on that in big, bold letters." So if it was so easy and if he can be so sure that these payments will increase in the future, what kept it from happening during the Street administration?

Nutter was appropriately deferential to the group of parents who stormed the gates of the Parking Authority and drew attention to this issue - Parents United for Public Education or PUPE (pronounce that Pyewp, please). Young Philly Politics congratulates one of PUPE's leaders, Helen Gym, who happens to be a regular contributor to their blog. Helen also took part in our first Next Mayor Community Forum where she talked about a number of issues, education among them.

Nutter and Evans were also quick to point out to the parents (as one of our commenters was yesterday) that the mission of the PPA is not to fund the schools. That's just one of the bonuses that was promised as a result of the state takeover. They encouraged the parents to remain vigilant in their oversight of the PPA and to focus their activism on the entities that can truly make a difference in increasing funding for schools - the state and federal governments.

Earlier today, Nutter joined State Senator Anthony Williams and a number of the city's black elected officials, as well as the leadership of the Laborers Union, to announce a commitment to increasing minority participation in the trades unions. KYW's Steve Tawa's report is here with the word inclusion in quotes in the title as if it's a code word for something else. Nutter's message discipline continues as he works the quote, "left out, locked out, or locked up, because of a lack of opportunity" into yet another story. This time around, though, he uses some stronger rhetoric describing the situation in Philadelphia as "an environment of economic apartheid." He even got a little folksy with, "[w]e're going to end the 'it's not me, it's the person behind the tree' nonsense going on." He's been a great study in the power of political messaging and the very careful choice of wording since the beginning of his campaign.

But don't worry. Even with this flurry of pre-inaugural activity, I'm sure there will be plenty for Nutter to do once he takes office.

In an op-ed for the Evening Bulletin, attorney Gregory J. Sullivan takes issue with City Council's attempts last week to ensure more minority inclusion in the expansion of the Convention Center - not because of their attempts to open it up to non-union firms, but for establishing any kind of racial set aside at all.

There's some quoting of a Supreme Court decision thrown in for good measure.

Of course, we have heard the arguments for and against affirmative action before, most famously in the seminal Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case in 1978, which was about affirmative action in the context of academic admission.

In his op-ed, Sullivan basically take the position that government's only responsibility is to ensure that, in the case of the Convention Center, black contractors and workers are not kept out of the work based on the color of their skin. In his opinion, it's fine if they end up being kept out because their contracting firms are uncompetitive or, in the case of the workers, they aren't in the unions. As long as the government makes sure that people aren't being discriminated against based on skin color, everything is hunky-dory.

These arguments seem very similar to arguments by conservative, free-market proponents, often economists, who say that the free market can fix everything from health care to public schools. Often, these arguments are based on the market being perfect. We all know that perfect conditions do not exist.

And yes, in an ideal world, in which there is no other discrimination based on skin color, where blacks and whites enjoy the same educational opportunities, the same housing conditions, where everyone lines up evenly at the starting line, it may be sufficient for the government to have the role suggested by Sullivan. Unfortunately, that's just not the case. And so government, in this case City Council, must do what they can with a situation that is directly under their control - authorizing the Convention Center expansion.

Look what's happening in Montgomery County! Democrats and Republicans working together. Mostly because they both don't like another Republican.

Hey, being united in their dislike for one person worked for the 1980 Phillies, so why couldn't it work for Montgomery County?

Does this mean they're might be room for cooperation between the city and its fairly wealthy neighboring county to the northwest?

I'm not in the office today and won't be able to blog.

Anyway, here's a topic for discussion:

What do you think Building Trades Council President Pat Gillespie will be getting mayor-elect Michael Nutter for Christmas?

And another:

Will there be enough people left in Philadelphia who aren't politically active to fill all of the positions on the boards and commissions?

I guess those 3000 resumes that the Nutter team has received are going to come in handy.

And finally...

How sweet a gig is vice chairman of the Philadelphia Board of Pensions and Retirement?

Yesterday, I asked how sweet a gig it must be to be vice chairman of the pension board.

Today I'm wondering how great it must be to be a DROP-eligible longtime elected official who's about to start his retirement. Oh, wait... I guess it is pretty great:

But Street also struck some odd notes as he riffed about his rise up the municipal ladder. The oddest comment came when he boasted about the lump sum pension payment he'll collect early next year to the tune of $452,700.

Street told the members that when he decided to run for Council in 1979, "I quickly found out that it took three four-year terms at that time to vest a pension and I was really going to be around here at least 12 years and then the lure of the Council presidency was more than I could resist and so here I am."
...
"I probably could have been a little bit more confident about all of this if I had known early on that there was going to be a DROP program," he said to tittering in the chambers.

Seriously? I know the mayor doesn't drink a drop, smoke, eat unhealthy food and he exercises pretty regularly. In short, he's a health nut. But what was influencing him as he went on, in Council, in front of the entire City Hall press corps, about how "financially secure" he's going to be once he leaves office?

And how financially secure is that?

In March 2004, Street himself signed up for DROP and some time early next year, the city will cut Street a check for about $452,700. He'll also start collecting on his regular pension, which will be about $115,700 per year.

So he's getting a big fat check as a settlement to start out with and then he's getting about $10,000 per month in ex-mayor support. Basically, he's Kevin Federline without the two Spearlings to look after. For the record, I am aware that the man has put in some long hours in his 25+ years of service and that he probably could have earned a lot more money as a lawyer in private practice. But he makes it so easy by "crowing" about these things when he could have just said, "City Council, it's been real. Catch ya on the flip side" and went on his way.

Throughout this project, I've resisted the temptation to take part in the Street-bashing that a lot of other media and political folks have been fomenting. If you put personality to the side and take an objective look at where the city (the whole city) was in 2000 and where it is now, you can probably find just as many things - if not more - that are better than are worse. For that, the current mayor deserves some credit. I'll leave it to someone else to create the ledger sheet with Street's accomplishments on one side and his failings (policy, not personal) on the other. In fact, not too long ago, the Tribune did a decent job of it.

Does anyone have any ideas about why the mayor would go like that about his DROP check and pension? Was it a new recruiting pitch to attract people to city government?

"Come for the phila.gov email address. Stay for the fat DROP check!"

And really, who can blame him or any elected official for signing up for it? As long as it's a legal feature of the city's pension program in which elected officials are allowed to participate, they'd be unwise not to take it.

Bruce Schimmel at City Paper used his Loose Canon (get it?) column this week to make us aware of this really cool thing going on in Fishtown. Fishtown, of course, being the new home of "cool" now that Northern Liberties has become to expensive for cool to live.

Anyway, it seems that a particularly green-friendly developer named Patrick McDonald will give an electric car to anyone who purchases one of his LEED Gold certified homes. The homes go for over a half a million (uh-oh, looks like cool may be moving on to Bridesburg soon), but the car will cost you exactly zero in gas money:

With this house and car comes a dedicated parking spot and an electric socket built into the sidewalk so you can charge your car from your solar-paneled roof.

Schimmel's larger point in this column is to show how, in the absence of regulations in the building code that recognize elements of green building, green-friendly builders have taken a "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" approach to their developments. Of course, it's a risky move when the alternative to "forgiveness" is being ordered to tear down a building or a feature that cost millions to create.

It's encouraging, though, that in this case, unlike the infamous Comcast waterless urinals (they're Comcastic!), the city has been more willing to grant forgiveness and embrace the new technology.

I'm hoping that someday this will lead to my almost cartoonish-super-villain vision to get Philadelphia completely off the grid and essentially turn the whole city (and its acres and acres of flat roofs and vacant land) into one big power plant for the surrounding region. Money spent by suburban folks for Philly Power can replace the commuter wage tax as the way of transferring suburban money into the city. Each house would look sort of like this diagram from an article in the January 2004 issue of Harvard Magazine:

Which is explained in this caption:
A future hydrogen-powered workplace. Fuel-cell-driven cars "gas up" on hydrogen (in yellow) piped from a natural-gas reformer, and send electricity (in red) back to the power controller outside the workplace. The power controller, running its own much-larger fuel cells, sends electricity and hot water (in blue) to the office building and can sell surplus electricity to the power grid, creating a revenue stream for the company.

So while I sit here twirling my mustache and try to figure out how to make this scheme come together, hopefully folks like Patrick McDonald keep on building houses that can power cars (and buses, other buildings, trains...)

Could there be a regional partnership in the making?

Judging from his answer to such a question posed by the Philadelphia Jewish Voice, Montco St. Rep. Josh Shapiro thinks so:

PJV: Do you see possibilities of new coalition-building between the Philadelphia Mayor-Elect Michael Nutter administration and suburban legislators of both parties?

Emphatically, yes. Michael and I have already begun speaking about regionalism and some ways we can work Montgomery County together with Philadelphia. I think it is critical on transportation, on crime, on the arts and culture, on so many issues, that there be regional cooperation. Unlike [Philadelphia Mayor] John Street, who really frankly put his head in the sand and ignored those around him, Michael Nutter is going to reach out and work with the other counties and work with the other elected officials to make sure our region is strong.

Another big piece of the Nutter administration will be put into place today with the announcement of the new Budget Director.

Before you start to doze off (oh yay! Budget Director!), just remember how big a job this is. The person in this position is responsible for preparing and directing oversight of the operating budget, providing financial forecasts and updating the City's Five-Year Financial Plan.

Anything that the next administration wants to do, wants to accomplish, needs to be paid for. The Budget Director is the one who is going to figure out how to do that.

Check back later today for more.

(edited to add) I guess we know what City Controller Alan Butkovitz wants to ask the new Budget Director and the Mayor-elect.

(edited to add) It's also worth taking another look at candidate Nutter's policy paper called "An Honest Budget Now: The Nutter Plan to Bring Fiscal Integrity to City Government."

I'm listening to part 2 the podcast of Mike Dunn's interview of John Street. Street trots out his math skills again to make sure we know that anything less than 1 (the number of actual city officials who were convicted in the corruption probe), is zero... assuming we're talking about whole numbers. Take a listen. Street thinks that future Philadelphians will be quite happy with his administration:

Finally, John Street believes he'll be remembered instead for revitalizing neighborhoods: demolishing vacant buildings and towing abandoned cars. And he believes Philadelphians will look back fondly on his two terms as mayor:

"History is going to treat us very good. History is going to be very, very fair and favorable to us."

The interview including podcasts for parts one and two can be found here.

The new budget director is Stephen Agostini from the economics and statistics administration at the US Commerce Department.

Mayor-elect Nutter named Stephen Agostini to be city Budget Director.

My editing station has been in use today so I'll edit the video from the event some time next week when I have more time.

For now, here are a few interesting points from the event:

1. According to his bio, Agostini is a Harvard grad and has a Masters in Public Policy from the Goldman School at Berkeley. So... yeah... he's a sm-ah-t guy. He's a New York City native and his wife teaches at Villanova so he's looking forward to moving back to the Philadelphia area. Nutter called this his plan to "increase the city's population" one person at a time.

2. The Mayor-elect says he's fully prepared to enact all of the promises that he made in his Budget policy paper. He says that the budget process will be open and that the budget that his administration produces will be easy to understand and it will emphasize outcomes, not inputs.

3. It would seem that Agostini is one of the first high profile appointments to answer the call for the "best and brightest." He got his resume into the hands of folks who could get it to Finance Director Rob Dubow. Dubow said that once Agostini "came through the door" it was very clear that he was someone whom the administration would want to have.

4. While Nutter hasn't read each of the 3000+ resumes that have been submitted through his website, his transition team is working hard to get through all of them and get the most qualified and high-level candidates to him. According to the Inquirer story, he hopes to have the rest of the official cabinet (City Solicitor and City Representative) in place by January 7th.

For a look back at some of the issues- and mayor-related news of the past few days, check out our headlines page. Feel free to vent here about the current mayor's Christmas gift to himself.

Here's an idea. Go to your car and drive to the nearest Philadelphia street you can find. If you happen to be in Philadelphia already, bingo, start there. Now systematically drive on every street, down every block in the entire city. According to the city Department of Streets website you'd end up driving "2,180 miles of city streets, 35 miles of Fairmount Park roads, and 360 miles of state highways" for a total of 2,575 miles.

While you're on your road trip, take the time to observe everything. What do the houses look like? How does one neighborhood transition to another? Are there sections of the city that seem to be zoned for uses that would be more appropriate somewhere else? What condition is the infrastructure itself in and how does that differ by neighborhood? How many people are out and about, walking around?

It would help if you could do it all in a few months so that your picture of the city is taken during one time period. If you do this, you may be the only person in this city to have an idea of what the entire city actually looks like right now.

Neat idea, eh? Well, a columnist named Bill McGraw at the Detroit Free Press did exactly that in his city. After exploring each and every block of the Motor City, he returned to a number of areas for a closer look:

When I completed the journey, I went back out and re-explored a number of areas, and was joined by a team of Free Press photographers, videographers, designers, artists, editors and others.

I wasn't a stranger. I have covered Detroit for 35 years and lived in it or next to it for virtually my entire life. In some respects, Detroit was worse than I thought. In other respects, it was better.

After seeing this, I'm struck by the question, does anyone really know what the whole city of Philadelphia looks like right now? Is it as good/bad as any of us think it is?

In one of the columns for the multi-part series, McGraw describes a distressed neighborhood in Detroit with words that could just as easily be used for any of Philadelphia's worst off or any of a number of failed-state third-world countries:

Neighborhoods exist seemingly outside of the establishment's consciousness, held together by longtime residents who refuse to give up and are helped by grassroots efforts to keep them going. But all the while they face the harsh reality of a municipal infrastructure crippled by too little money, too few human resources and too large an area to oversee.

So, do we have any Philly newspaper columnists that would up to this challenge? I'm sure there are a few that you wouldn't mind nominating for a several month sabbatical. Sound off in the comments.

The Introduction to the series, which includes links to each part and to the supplemental video and photos can be found here. I've been reading through the series for a good chunk of the afternoon and even without ever having been to Detroit, I find them completely fascinating. If you have time, give it a look.

(via the 13th Floor, Governing Magazine's blog.)

Mayor Street's generous raise and lump sum pension payment are today's topic of discussion on the 13th Floor, blog of Governing Magazine.

Finally, some national recognition for what can only be classified as an ingenious way to get a slight boost in wage tax revenues. These payments are subject to the wage tax, right?

As I mentioned earlier today, the Detroit Free Press recently put together a fantastic multimedia presentation about the 2700 mile journey of one of their columnists who never even left the city. He drove every mile of every street in the city of Detroit and did he sure see some crazy stuff.

Having just seen the Will Smith pic, I Am Legend, in which Smith plays the last man on earth living a Manhattan that has gone three years without any upkeep at all, I was especially struck by this installment of the Detroit series. In it, columnist Bill McGraw describes parts of the city where nature has basically begun to reclaim the land. Now, I know we have a few cases of this in some of the more distressed neighborhoods in Philadelphia. There are the abandoned houses with the trees growing in them, the vacant lots with the waist-high weeds and some pretty poorly maintained park land.

But in Detroit, even their illegally dumped garbage is being reclaimed by nature:

Sometimes, when nature and trash combine, the result is strange, subtle and seemingly permanent changes in the city's topography.

There are hundreds of mounds across the city. Some are knee high; others are big as a garage.
...
One of the mounds, off of Huber Avenue east of Mt. Elliott, is more than two stories high.

Sort of gives new meaning to the John Maynard Keynes quote, "In the long run, we're all dead."

These sections of Detroit where the grass covered garbage mounds are most prominent have an eerie quiet about them:

Inside the zone [an "orphaned" neighborhood near in the city's northeast section], which extends for several blocks, there are no homes, no factories, no parks, no people and no street signs. Some of the streets themselves have been obliterated by decay and vegetation.

In Legend the filmmakers worked very hard and used some wild special effects to give us a picture of what Manhattan, the busiest part of the busiest city in the world, would like if it were abandoned for just a few years. Apparently, they could have saved some money by filming in the Motor City.

Is anyone aware of any parts of this city that are as bad shape as these parts of Detroit? Let me know in the comments so I can go check them out for myself.

I received an email from a reader of this blog who was especially impressed by the Detroit Free Press project that I wrote about yesterday - here and here - and that still currently occupies the front page of thenextmayor.com).

Evan, who was a student at Penn shared his response to my query about whether any parts of Philadelphia are succumbing to nature in the same way that several parts of Detroit are. Apparently, as Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, "...life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territory, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously."

Evan, who sent me some of his photographs of this very process, has this to say (links go to full sized versions of the pictures, the smaller ones are below in the order described):

I'm a regular reader of The Next Mayor, I really enjoyed your last post. Pretty amazing story from the Detroit Free Press.

We spent a lot of time looking at deterioration around the city, and I came away with some interesting pictures. In the first two, nature has really overtaken some abandoned buildings. In the second one, you can see trees and greenery growing inside what used to be a factory (I should note that when I was there, a sign was hanging off the building claiming they
were soon turning the Brewerytown place into lofts.) In the third (my favorite), someone left a couch in Logan Triangle, where the city bulldozed almost every house on what used to be 17 blocks of packed houses. Grass has now overtaken the former neighborhood.

First picture:

Second picture:

Third picture:

Thanks to Evan Goldin for the feedback and the great pictures! I'm beginning to think there may be something to replicating this Detroit Free Press project here in Philadelphia.

The Inquirer's Jeff Shields and Patrick Kerkstra cornered the mayor yesterday after a Police Appreciation ceremony and got his thoughts about the hullabaloo that his recent - belated - pay raise is generating. Apparently he doesn't think much about it:

"I don't understand what the fuss is about."

And that's not even the QOTD. Those honors go to Council President Anna Verna who, despite declining to comment on the issue, still had a nice little zinger and an indication that she's looking forward to the next administration:

"In 11 more days it'll be a dead issue," she said.

That's quite a legacy the mayor has waiting for him.

(edited to add) For the record, the Inquirer took a pretty strong position on Street's (and Krajewski's and Abraham's and Sheriff Green's and Commissioner Tartaglione's) use of the DROP program - a pension incentive that was designed to retain veteran city workers, not give a big payday to fairly well paid elected officials - and Street's belated acceptance of his pay raises. To put it mildly, the Inky editorial board is a little... peeved.

According to today's Clout column, Councilman Rick Mariano (D-Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix) is maintaining a MySpace page with his thoughts about life in the big house. Philadelphia Will Do already did the humor thing with this tidbit of information so aside from my lame blog post title, I won't try to tease out any more jokes.

Wait. What? "Poke" is a Facebook feature, not a MySpace feature. Oh well. Never let the facts get in the way of a terrible joke.

In all seriousness, though, Councilman Mariano's thoughts about this nation's prison system seem to indicate that he has transformed into a total liberal. Awesome! When he gets out in 8 to 10 years, he can run on prison reform as an issue and be totally credible. He'd have my vote.

Anyway, if you want to keep up with the trials and tribulations of Councilman Mariano (D-Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix), check out myspace.com/freerick.

The Metro today points out that as of this morning, there have been 390 murders in Philadelphia this year compared with 402 at the same time last year. Unless things get really out of hand this weekend and Monday, we should not only finish with fewer than last year's total of 406 but also under 400. Now, 390+ murders is still waaaay too much, but it could mean that we're on the cusp of a downward trend that will return us to the lows of a few years ago.

We can not forget, however, that there are real people behind these numbers - not just the 390+ who lost their lives to violence this year, but also the friends, mothers, fathers, children, wives, brothers and sisters of the deceased.

To that end, WHYY 90.9FM News has been running series of features about some of the victims of this wave of violence.

It's called Life Stories: Remembering Philadelphia's victims of gun violence. Later this afternoon, I'll be featuring the entire series - 4 longer radio features so far, 1 more to air on Monday - on The Next Mayor website. You'll be able to download each one as .mp3's or just listen to them on-line. If you've heard any of them this week, you know that they have been extremely poignant and heart wrenching.

Check back here and on the main site later this afternoon and throughout the holiday weekend.

As promised, The Next Mayor project presents a series by WHYY News, telling the stories of a few of the fallen.

WHYY reporters met with their family members to find out not only how they died, but also how they lived and what their loss means for the family.

Check out the series here and come back on Monday for another installment.

Mayor-elect Michael Nutter has announced plans for his inaugural that, for once, will not break the bank: Only one event costs anything, and that costs only $50.

The actual swearing-in is Jan. 7; there's also an interfaith prayer service planned for Jan. 3.

The Daily News story on the events is here. Or read Nutter's press release here.

...a crime rate as low as New York City's.

Today, the Daily News spends the last day of 2007 focusing on the story that has been the most consistent throughout the year - the murder rate.

Dave Davies starts his cover story by reminding us that the City of Brotherly Love, known nationwide as "Killadelphia," officially has the highest murder rate of the top 10 largest cities in the nation. When some smaller cities are included, Philadelphia falls to fifth behind Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland and Washington. See chart.

(Wait, isn't our new police commissioner from Washington?)

Now, the tales of murder rates and total numbers of murders can be misleading and the story is very complicated. While it's easy for me to wish for the 5.9 murders per 100,000 people that New York will finish 2007 with, the truth is, those numbers are skewed by New York's sheer size. One might think that because New York is still on target to finish with about 490 total murders, it may be better to compare the cities differently.

New York has over 8 million people. Philadelphia has almost 1.5 million. Maybe they have similar murder rates compared to the numbers of people living in poverty? For simplicity's sake, let's make that comparison using just poverty numbers and murder rate. I know that murders do occur among people who aren't living in poverty but since the prevalence of poverty is the most often cited cause, it may be illustrative to focus on those numbers for a second.

With a 19% poverty rate, New York has about 1.5 million people living at or below the poverty line while Philadelphia's 25% rate means that about 360,000 Philadelphians are in that demographic. So yes, New York has a lot more people than Philadelphia (8m to 1.5m) but it's not true that all of those extra 6.5 million are well-off. Clearly, there's a great number of poor people living the Big Apple too. New York's murder rate per people living in poverty at about 33. Philadelphia's is about 109! So even if we just look at those numbers, Philadelphia still has a murder rate that's about 3.3 times higher.

As far as I can tell that's what criminologists who study New York's dramatic drop in murders - from over 2200 in 1990 to under 500 this year - mean by this:

Frank Zimring, author of "The Great American Crime Decline," said no changes in New York's economy or demographics explain its remarkable drop in violent crime, so "you conclude it's the police by the process of elimination."

So you can't explain New York's drop in murders by pointing to it's economic growth between 1990 and today and you can't explain it's low murder rate compared to ours by just pointing to how well off NYC is overall. In fact, some criminologist say that New York's embrace of - stop reading this if you're a fan of Geno's owner Joey Vento - immigration could be at least partially responsible for that city's crime turnaround:

"New York is different in a lot of ways. New York would have lost population in the last census if not for all the immigration, and there are studies going back to the 1930s showing lower crime rates among foreign-born residents.

"In addition [Mayor] Michael Bloomberg has done a lot of innovative things. And Tom (sic) Kelly is an incredible police commissioner."

(For the record, Raymond Kelly is the police commissioner of New York and while Tom Kelly can be considered a miracle worker for guiding the Twins to two World Series championships, he was never police commissioner of New York.)

So the consensus, among people quoted by the Daily News who aren't named "Sylvester Johnson," is that policing can make a difference. Hence this challenge thrown down by the Inquirer's Editorial Board on Sunday:

Mayor-elect Michael Nutter has made fighting crime a top priority. To be effective, he must consider the size of the city's police force and how officers are deployed.

Philadelphians have good reason to expect better results by their Police Department in 2008.

So for 2008, whaddya say? Can we hope for a murder rate that equals New York, which, by my estimation would result in a total of about 87 murders. Still too many, but when you consider that it also means that the lives of about 300 people will be spared, it's a damn good start.

(For more about a policing tactic currently being used in New York, check out this article from last week's NYT that talks about Operation Impact - their latest, and very effective, method of hot spot policing.)

Since I'd like to start 2008 off with a clean slate, and internet cache, here are a bunch of interesting items - both from the web and from the email bag - that I've been meaning share but haven't gotten to yet.

First, let's go to the email bag. I continued to get responses to my post about a fascinating project that was undertaken by the Detroit Free Press over the summer and released a couple weeks ago. To sum up, it seems like the folks at the DFP wanted to write the obit for that formerly great American city before it finally succumbs and de-incorporates. Ok, ok... that's unlikely but, given where the Motor City has been trending, not impossible.

Anyway, Evan Goldin, who wrote me and shared some pictures of parts of Philadelphia that have reverted back to nature (a la "I Am Legend"), emailed me with a follow up that included a link to his entire photo set. Taken for "Photography of Urban Place" class in the Fall of 2005, Goldin's photos tell a story of a city with places that have declined to the utmost depths and, in some cases, are beginning to be reborn. It's a hopeful tale about why NO part of the city of Philadelphia is so far gone that it can't be brought back.

And that's the theme of another email that I received from frequent friend of TNM, Greg Heller, who, as an urban planning professional and Philadelphian, brought his own perspective and experience to Detroit when his visited not too long ago. There are many reasons, says Greg, that Philadelphia is in a much better place than Detroit:

Anyone who thinks that Philly and Detroit are in a similar condition are nuts. Detroit has a very very small downtown core. There has clearly been some major civic and business investment, but it has not been tied to any planning or best practices in economic development. From the moronic Renaissance Center to the casinos with blocks and blocks of blank garage walls, to the monolithic Cobo Center that sits like a massive dividing wall in the downtown, to a waterfront even deader than Penn's Landing (imagine that!) these new projects have been unsuccessful from an urban design standpoint, and also, apparently from an economic development standpoint.

I don't see much hope for Detroit, and I am generally the optimist for urban revitalization when others question its feasibility. This city is war-torn, and has suffered from hundreds of millions of dollars squandered over the past 15 years. I wish I had a different story to report, but this is what I saw. The only thing more depressing was the city I spent the previous two days in--Flint.

Also in response to my query about whether a project like the DFP's could ever be replicated here, Mike Benner from Metro Philadelphia pointed out that his paper has something like it going on right now. It's called City Blocks and it launched last Thursday. According to the first edition, they're going to throw a dart at the map of Center City and provide a snapshot of the block they hit. First up... the 1100 block of Moravian.

Click "Continue Reading" for more of my end of year link dump.