Casinos and rewriting the zoning code.

Environmental issues - increased (and more convenient) recycling, more car sharing via PhillyCarShare, more bike lanes, green purchasing, green buildings, better funding of Fairmount Park, more trees planted, etc.

I would like some structural changes that transform the way we operate, so that new policies are not so damn hard to come by, special interests don't have as much power, etc.

I would start that off with public funding of elections.

The Philadelphia School and Personal Property Taxes should be abolished as they are now written.
These taxes are not administered in a fair manner.

Both taxes should be part of the Real Estate Tax and charged to all RE owners. Right now School Tax is only charged to those people who receive dividends/interest from investments; those people who only invest in CD's do not pay School Tax.

And, again with Personal Property Tax: those people who own stock in companies must pay the tax on the net asset value of the investments and those who invest in CD's are not taxed.

Rendell was on the right track when he abolished the Personal Property Tax; but then Street brought the tax back into effect.

We are not talking about just wealthy people here:
why should people, wealthy or not, who invest in dividend paying companies be dealt unfair taxation when those who accumulate their money in CD's be exempt from those taxes.

Term-limits (three four year terms for a total of 12 years) for Councilpeople, so we don't get silly, ineffectual Councilpeople like David Cohen and Thacher Longstreth (rest in peace).

What I've seen missing in political talk since I've been watching is the spirit of FDR. The spirit that got up and said he would try everything he could to create work for people and economic growth, the spirit who called his efforts experiments and the spirit that committed to admitting when some of those experiments failed.

Everyone defends their record endlessly. No one is willing to say that they win some and lose some. or that they are willing to try a lot of things to win.

Behind public safety, safe, clean public transportation and the environment are my top issues. Then behind that are business taxes, and properly and fairly administering property taxes.

We need a reformer, all of our major systems are still broken and we need to return power from boneheaded cronies to our neighborhood leaders:

#1 Continued Ethics Reform (why is there a legal loophole for undeclared candidates to fundraise from patrons without any restrictions?)
#2 Budget Reform (lets cut the fat of patronage jobs and contracts & low return big budget items, i.e. police overtime vs. more fulltime officers, paying for garbage collection vs. being paid for recycling, etc..)
#3 School Reform (lets create mechanisms so that neighborhoos can functionally reclaim and be held responsible for their schools, i.e. it takes a village, not a buracracy)
#4 Zoning Reform (We need to encourage green space, better transit, affordable housing, mixed uses, more private investment... the current code does none of these things)
#5 Tax Reform (We can grow our revenue stream and created jobs with targeted BPT cuts to encourage small business, reassment of property taxes with safeguards for low-income)

The local environment! Recycling! Oil use and pollution and emissions! Public transit! And how all of these issues affect the urban poor, now and forever!!

The Next Energy Crisis
One major issue will dominate our discourse for the next decade; the world-wide decline in the rate of petroleum production, referred to as “peak oil.” According to The Hirsch Report to the USDOE, the geological phenomenon of peak oil is about to result in a decade long shortage of our liquid transportation fuels, gasoline and diesel. This will disrupt our national and regional economies, due to our acute dependence on inexpensive transportation. Every aspect of our lives will be affected, but food supply will probably emerge as the most serious problem. Because the scope of the problem is so large, government intervention will be required. The next mayor needs to understand the importance of the issue and act accordingly if we are to survive the crisis.

It isn't just energy, folks. Many call it sustainability, or more simply 'the future'. The city's prime directive must be infused with the principles of sustainability (respect for and efficient use of all natural resources, etc.).

And this does NOT MEAN just trees, or just energy, or just clean air & water. It means living as though we understood that all is truly interconnected and inter-dependent.

It means the city understanding that energy efficient schools equals fewer infants sickened from mercury and toxics from burning coal, less ruined drinking water sources from mine drainage, less tax money poured down the hole of chasing price fluctuations in natural gas, electricity or oil fuel. It means healthier school children from learning about nutrition & environment, from eating more vegetarian foods (fruits & veg, nuts & beans) and less refined imported sugars & processed fats, etc. Parking in center city, and the blocks of garage doors or acres of pavement which could easily be urbane civic spaces if a green agenda guided zoning, building codes and development incentives.

Philadelphia must undertake a 'green theme' in everything. Who will step forward and adopt a sophisticated growth agenda based in this century's bottom line mandate: Pay Attention! The next century is not your father's century!

Wm Marston - integrated architecture+design consulting
arf 'EYE' tact (at-) mac.com
- moving into the next real world -
click and take our survey of people willing to help create a sustainable economy in urban Philadelphia

We need to clean this city up. The air quality, our neighborhoods, our parks, our schools, the rivers. A better environment will make the city more livable and it has the power to change peoples "addytudes". The environment can not and should not be perceived as an issue only important to wealthy people. The way our city looks on the surface says a lot about what's going on beneath the surface. I'm not suggesting that planting trees, fresh paint and cleaner subways will solve all our city's problems. However, if noticeable improvements are made in these areas, this will give people hope. Hope can be contagious. With a little momentum a lot could change for the better.

I think we should gut the city and start over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Collect the $462 million in overdue property taxes. Some of this unpaid property tax is from debts that are a decade or more old.

See www.hallwatch.org for the breakdown using city data.

Taxes should be collected blindly, fairly, and without bias. Right now, certain favored zip codes have tax delinquencies of almost 50%, yet the pols plan to raise property taxes still further.

Everyone has to contribute their alloted fair share to schools, police, and city services. The city must stop treating property tax payment as essentially optional!

We need to pass ethics reform with teeth. Greater openness and transparency, a Philly sunshine law, is critical to getting any of the initiatives above heard.

Plus, we have to abolish odd taxes that hurt the business climate and set us apart from surrounding states and counties, such as the gross profit tax/BPT and wages taxes.

We are not collecting property taxes, but we are driving out business with these regressive, job relocating taxes? Can local Democrat get that?

Some of my pet issues, in no particular order:

1) reform zoning in order to create a simple process that prioritizes maintaining Philadelphia's walkable neighborhoods and compact downtown and de-emphasizes union demands.

2) reform the city's tax code. Drastically reduce or eliminate both the GRT and NPT portions of the BPT, continue reducing the wage tax and reform property taxation in order to spare people on fixed incomes from dramatic increases as well as no longer penalizing people for doing maintenance and making structural improvements on their homes.

3) Provide more funding to SEPTA (I believe the city currenlty only spends 1 or 2% of its budget on public transit, which is partially offset by SEPTA's fairbox revenue through infrastructure lease payments), and work with state government to reform the organization to make it more accauntable and efficient (reduce the number of board members and give representation to counties that's proportional to their share of the system's ridership. Put a "CEO" in charge with a system of checks and balances between him/her and the board, then hire somebody like David Gunn for that position). Maybe Rendell's transit committe (which had SEPTA union leaders among its members) said found SEPTA to be doing well relative to other large transit agencies, but I think that tells us more about the state of public transit in this country than it does about SEPTA.

4) Provide more funding to Fairmount Park. Catch up on maintenance of current attractions and facilities, as well as maybe adding more. Improve accessibility to the park system via public transit (a light rail line, a subway, a shuttle bus... something is needed that specifically takes people to the park's popular attractions).

5) Encourage commercial and dense residential development along the city's commercial corridors. I'm not against the concept of public housing, but it's a disgrace that we used tax dollars to build low-density housing with off-street parking right next to the Fairmount and Girard Ave subway stations on Broad St. Does this city not have anybody to do urban planning?

6) To build on the previous point, there should be commercial use buildings with office space on upper floors being built along the El in West Philadelphia and the River Wards. Penn's doing some of this in University City, but there's no reason for them to have a monopoly. Maybe with this type of development we can get some of those companies crowding into corporate parks in the King of Prussia area to move into the city once taxes, zoning and other awakward city rules become more appealing.

7) Continue to reduce class sizes in the Philadelphia School District. Having attended a school with very large classes, I have the very strong impression that large classes promote bad discipline which, in turn, makes it harder for students who want to learn to pay attention in class due to noise, distraction and peer pressure (this isn't really the mayor's job, but I thought I'd mention it).

8) Privatize garbage collection and running PGW. There's no reason for the city to hire its own full-time workers to carry out this type of task. SEPTA may be another agency that would benefit from this type of reform. The pending expiration of its 30-year lease on city infrastructure could make a wonderful bargaining tool for encouraging reform.

9) Once all these reforms are in place, ENFORCE THE RULES, and do so fairly and uniformly rather than at the whim of city council members and the politically connected. There's no reason the sale of an RDA-owned property should depend on the approval of the district councilmember. We need continuing ethics and accountability reform to attain this.

10) Revisit Michael Nutter's city contract reform legislation. This bill was partially gutted before passage by the removal of most/all requirements that applied to non-profits, which reduced its effectiveness immensely, in my opinion.

Maybe I'll think of more stuff later.

Wanted to amplify Liz's excellent #3 above, "School Reform (let's create mechanisms so that neighborhoods can functionally reclaim and be held responsible for their schools, i.e. it takes a village, not a buracracy). I've been working on this issue in my neighborhood for four years and the one truth I've discovered is that my local school cannot function as the families here would like because it is disconnected from the neighborhood. What that means is, there is no official mechanism that connects the school with the neighborhood and thus, there is no mutual accountability.

Voting machines. Specifically the need to make sure they're counting right and telling the truth. That means auditable paper ballots, which can mean optical scanning or other technologies to make things easy both for voters and election workers. But there MUST be a way to do a real recount, and to audit the process.

I agree about voting machines. They should never send voting data over the internet. One of the first things you learn if you've ever studied computer security is that the only secure computer is one that isn't plugged into a network. The only thing you should have to worry about is whether the poll workers are honest (which is a whole different issue).

Give the Planning Commission some real authority, enough to bring Gary Hack or someone of his caliber back.

Keep the ball rolling on the creation of new schooling opportunities like the recently opened magnet schools in South Philly & Center City - make sure they have solid leadership & good funding going forward.

Get rid of the Business Privilege Tax.

Do a thorough audit of all city departments to and find ways to streamline city government, make it more efficient.

Secure dedicated and adequate funding for SEPTA, then follow up with SEPTA management to make sure they are publicly accountable for using this stable funding source to increase the frequency of service, open up new lines of service, and maintain stations, stops and rolling stock in good condition.

How about increasing jobs and tourism by dredging the Delaware? Why are we letting New Jersey dictate to us how our area of the river is used?
Bigger ships fitting into our ports could have a huge impact on our economy. Bigger cruise ships that can fit under the bridges by dredging could spur tourism. If I'm taking a cruise, I want to be on the bigger ships with all the amenities. Not the smallest ships in the fleet..because that's all that can fit into our docks.

Dredge the river. Don't let New Jersey stop us.
I'm not buying the environmental scare tactics.