The Mayoral Traveling Road Show and Three-Ring Wonk Circus made a stop at the Four Seasons hotel this afternoon, as three candidates showed up to pay homage to the Center Philadelphia Development Corp./Center City District.
The CCD issued its new report on how to plan for a more vibrant Center City on Friday, which I wrote about in Currents Sunday. (http://go.philly.com/Satullo)
CCD head Paul Levy is an evangelistic as his ancient namesake when it comes to the issue of Philly's ancient Center City vs. the Neighborhoods quarrel. He thinks that supposed opposition is bunk, and he will recite statistics until your eyes cross to prove that Center City jobs, in particular Center City office jobs, are the great bulwark of income security and household stability out in the sainted 'hoods.
One of Paul's missions in life is to end what he sees as the city's politics of false choices around this issue; this report was in some ways his summa on the topic.
Paul is a considerable enough personage, last year's Philadelphia Award winner -- and his clientele of Center City business leaders is powerful enough -- that he was able to extract the presence of at least three of the road-weary candidates: Chaka Fattah, Tom Knox, and Michael Nutter. Bob Brady promised to come, but didn't show. (This wasn't surprising given the extreme weariness and annoyance with the ceaseless forum schedule that he expressed Monday morning while being interviewed by Inquirer Editorial Board.) Dwight Evans had informed CPDC ahead of time he couldn't make it.
Fattah showed he'd been stung by some coverage of a Design Advocacy Group forum last week which indicated he'd basically told the Center City middle class that their concerns about planning, design and investment in Center City were a low priority for him compared to his anti-poverty agenda.
Fattah was at pains to counter that impression today, stressing several times that he supports creation of a comprehensive plan for the city, supports major Center City projects such as the Comcast Tower and the new Barnes, and wants an aggressive tax policy to attract new office jobs to the urban core.
For the most part, the three were on message about their respective (and not widely divergent) approaches to tax reform, addressing violence and boosting mass transit.
The liveliest exchange came over Fattah's plan to lease Philadelphia International Airport, which he said would raise up to $2 billion. He'd use the proceeds to essentially create an endowment to fund his ambitious, but vague war on poverty in Philadelphia.
Fattah said more than 100 other jurisdictions around the nation had used the same approach to lease municipal assets to raise funds, and he saw no reason Philly could not do the same with the airport.
Knox replied that federal law puts limits on leasing hub airports that would scotch Fattah's idea _ "unless you get the law changed down in Washington."
"I'll bet you a million bucks that this will work. Are you willing to bet a million on it?" Fattah challenged Knox. "Well, at least I have a million," Knox replied.
Levy, as moderator, noted that this whole exchange occurred after Fattah interjected his comment into Nutter's time to answer a question.
"Michael, would you like to give your answer?" Levy asked.
"Nah," Nutter said with a wry smile, "it's just getting good."
The one other distinctive moment came when Fattah, responding to a question about the impact of casinos, basically offered a sanguine picture. The casinos will bring jobs and vital tax revenue, he said. "It's not really true to say we're bringing gambling to Philadelphia," he said. "It's already here. There must be about 500 buses a day leave here to go to Atlantic City. Philadelphians already play slots. Now they'll just play them closer to home."
His main concern, he said, is that the vast majority of casino jobs go to "people with a Philadelphia ZIP code."
Nutter, for his part, defended his somewhat controversial promise to declare a state of emergency in violence-prone neighborhoods on his first day in office.
"People criticize me because they worry how that'll make Philadelphia look nationally," he said, "Well, in the last two weeks, we've had CBS news do a report on Philadelphia violence rising. Sunday, it was the New York Times. The news is out. People worry how it'll look. Well, right now, what it looks like is that we're not doing anything."
-- Chris Satullo
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