As promised, here comes the highlights:
Let me 'splain what you're seeing.
As he opened his address, Mayor Nutter was clearly emotional as he told the story of his first visit to City Council almost 26 years ago. He then quoted from the Athenian pledge, an oath that all citizens of Athens took upon becoming citizens. From there he outlined a number of spending initiatives, goals for recycling, plans to lower wage and business taxes.
In addition to what you've seen, Nutter also referred to the impending negotiations with the city's four municipal unions. He said that he would turn over all of the city's books to the unions and told them to challenge his administration's revenue predictions. In a meeting to brief reporters about this budget, he said something to the effect that there would be no more playing of the "hide the money" or "where's the money" game that had so often happen with the previous administration.
There will, of course, be much more about this in the Daily News and on WHYY 91FM tomorrow. Here's a quick wrap up from the Inquirer. We'll also be discussing this in depth. The Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority has also sent out their response to the Five Year Plan. They do express some concerns but compared to what they used to write about the previous administration's Five-Year Plans, they seem pretty satisfied with the city's assumptions and projections.
And... we will also begin rolling out a new project... a sort of "Son of The Next Mayor" that we hope will help everyone in Philadelphia (and the region) make sense of this whole process. I don't want to give too much away but rest assured that the state of the partnership between the Daily News and WHYY is strong.
Comments (1)
I heart him. :-)
Posted by Anonymous | February 14, 2008 5:03 PM