Great Expectations

I'm going to comment as anonymous, and keep my neighborhood group anonymous, so I can be perfectly frank.

1. My group's most important function is as a neighborhood association that focuses on resident concerns. We represent renters as well as home owners, but when the two diverge, the home owners are more motivated and involved. We are really good at zoning input in our catchment area and well respected by the ZBA.

2. Bad habits of city government? Where to start...

A. We have to organize our own trash clean up that other cities do regularly

B. We have to liason with unresponsive city agencies who the mayor's office pretends are doing the basics of their mandates.

C. We have to get our city council rep to do the most basic things. She must write a letter demanding follow up to her office in a certain time frame on the most MENIAL matters, and I have a huge 5" wide binder with a collection of the letters from her to an agency after I've exhausted my options, and demanding follow up to her in two weeks.

D. We have to organize an informal response to nuisance properties, as well as an formal one. That means we have to send drug houses to Sheriff sale using any means possible, including putting down a deposit to force the city to collect the thousands in overdue taxes. The city simply won't collect evenly on liens accrued by the very properties that cost it the most.

E. There is no mechanism by which the RDA can be induced to follow its own redevelopment agreements. This property languishes for years, a decade or so is not uncommon. This must stop.

3. The city simply will not two away cars in order to do street cleaning. City reps even tell us that they can't afford to maintain the street cleaning machines that they have. Contrast this with San Fran and NYC where the tidy little trucks work all day and the streets show it. Why should, for example, the CCRA have to hire a private contractor to clean the trash and empty the public trash receptacles?

Why is the City Council person a mini-mayor who must make the city work? Can't an independent agency, such as an Inspector General do that follow up? Can't the citizen have some teeth to get a response? Can't a website for complaints that have been already vetted by a nonresponsive agency be formed as a requirement for any group, city or city money or property receiving, to field and document complaints? Can't citizens expect that drug arrests in public housing be published information so that an objective case can be made that the housing agency needs to address the problem?

Drug infested city and agency housing seems not to ever exist except to the Narcotics Strike Force of the PPD. Scattered site PHA houses and Housing Choice Voucher landlords that are religious or nonprofit are off limits and can rent to whomever deals drugs, sells themselves, etc. unimpeded by the city. When the sun sets, half of these properties in our catchment area have a nightly vice mardi gras. Trying to persuade the city that this is bad for those residents is as hard as getting them to acknowledge that this permissiveness and lack of responsiveness is bad for us.

We are indeed trapped in bad habits of needing money, but being stringently limited in how to use that money to a few narrow city programs that don't meet our needs. We are forced to do "housing counseling" with people who are clearly not able to manage the demands of owning a 100 old house. We have to promote programs such as spraying newspaper into houses that are already fire traps. We have to work with OHCD and focus only on the low income resident.

What about the middle class, which represents the bulk of the neighborhood? I don't feel any "counseling" to any resident is a cost effective use for hundreds of thousands of dollars in one small area alone. The group should be able to determine if they wish the money for beautification, say, or economic development that focuses on a commercial corridor. But no. OHCD demands that we have to try to rescue low income owners who are not elderly from themselves. Why not really encourage more renting?

Instead OHCD wants us to counsel people on how to avoid paying taxes, gas, water, and other bills that end up putting the owner more in debt.

The focus of OHCD to counsel government subsidy and forgiveness for any and every cost of living has to change. It's expensive on so many levels to the city.

The RDA has to take the property back from well-meaning, but failed affordable housing developers. We can't afford the vacant, blighted lots and shells of the future great imaginary housing project that has been stalled forever. City owned property is a magnet for drugs and crime. It also deprecitates equity in the surrounding area. That seems to be the exact purpose of some under Street. This kills the tax base that we need. City property held in limbo has to be auctioned off competitively to the highest bidder and that money used for critical city services.

Liens have to be collected. As a community group, we can't force the nuisance properties that owe gas, water, property tax, or just L&I liens for being run down to never get foreclosed upon. This is critical. This debt is legitimate, the city spend millions to put the liens up, and has to follow through as is their legal right. No community group's best intentions to clean and green can substitute for this. It's the city's own policy of laissez-faire that makes the blight. I honestly think that traditionally politicians are afraid that if they enforce the law, they will lose votes. But in fact, they will gain the kind of support they need now and in the future.

4. Both. We have to have a focus on our neighborhood, while also swapping ideas. A lot of this recently has been done online, as with www.phillyblog.com.

5. Next five years? Why not become more like our suburban counterparts in focusing on beautification issues, and in making a unified list of requirements that we need from the city to respond to.

Having lived in my neighborhood for almost 30 years I am surprised to realize that despite having participated and chaired civic actions close to this neighborhood I am really a child of the citywide neighborhood of Philadelphia. (lots of experience and reason to explain this, but it is not about MY story - it is about perspective, and how we frame the issues)

So I see the broadscope side of the divided opinion: me & my 'hood vs. city as a whole.

This gives me the perspective about what we all need. In my view it is only this citywide aspect that city government can or really that it should provide. Then when all 'hoods are equally served, equally respected and represented by council members who truly accept that as a basic premise - only then can we see a healthy relationship between city govt and the civic associations.

It is crucial to the well-being of the city - tp council-mayor relationships, for the zoning code rewrite and re-map (as Matt Blanchard so lucidly outlined in his Commentary on Sunday Oct.7, 2007), for the tax reform effort, and even for city-state relations (how would the rest of the state see us if we weren't identified as internall warring factions but rather as a diverse, unified powerhouse of an economic, education and human rights world leader generating jobs across the state, revenues for Harrisburg, and serving as a model of urban ecovillage principles rooted in eco-economics and sustainable business practices, to be emulated by all in the coming hard times.

That is MY Philadelphia. I hope to spread this perspective or viewpoint to all. I refer residents, developers, council members et al to leaders like Michael Porter of ICIC, Van Jones of the Oakland Etta Baker Center, Judy Wicks of the local Sustainable Business Network, the Henry George Society on land value taxation, our region's land conservation trusts, the DVRPC planners and environmental justice leaders, the inclusionary zoning consortium and many others.

These are the leaders of any urban environment for the future, as resource depletion and peaking oil production are exacerbated by global warming threaten to dislodge us in fat happy America from our take-out meals and TV chair recliners.

Remembering that old song that goes "WE can make it happen, we can make it happen!"

Bill Marston

1. We maintain contact with the Asian community in Philadelphia. This is important for us to feel part of the citizenship of the city and to be aware of the benefits that are due us legally and in health care.
2. The city virtually ignores us except during political campaigns and political fund raisers. Examples: Health information is not translated in Asian languages. Interpreting services are not provided as required by federal law. L&I information is not readily accusable for limited English business owners. New immigrant populations are vital to increase the city’s population, and there is no city agency hat addresses this need, as it is in Boston and New York.
3. Asian, Hispanic and Russian organizations are expected to translate and interpret free of charge. Bilingual employees are hired without a special rate and have additional duties without compensation.
4. Our new population should be ore aggressive in joining other civic groups and serving on boards. Civic groups should seek advisory capcity from other new populations.
5. All of the above.

Response to e-mail questions :

1) Our most important function is mediating zoning issues and representing neighbors' concerns before the Zoning Board; serving as a liaison between residents and city agencies/council offices.

2) Bad habits displayed by city gov't : too many to mention - a tolerance for ineffectiveness and incompetence, a disregard for organizations which, instead of being viewed as a critical partner in neighborhood stability are viewed as threats or nuisances. Unfortunately this also applies to politicians.

3) Residents usually come to the group after experiencing frustration at the municipal level. We do way too much that should be left to the council office and city agencies. This leaves little time to do adequate urban planning, event planning and neighborhood promotion vital to building nice communities and reinforcing community pride. We need to get back to this type of focus. I'm too close to the action to recognize any bad habits on our part, but I'm sure there are some.

4) Ideally, a civic organization should have a neighborhood focus first, and if resources permit, should definitely be engaged in citywide discussions about what affects us collectively. Some civic groups do not have enough manpower to remain engaged this way. Certainly neighborhoods which share boundaries should meet periodically to help share ideas and concerns. Our group has benefitted well from this as we continue to deal with a proposed trash transfer station along the Delaware River.

5) If city government improves, recognized civic groups should be empowered to represent members' concerns to council people, the Mayor, PHA, etc... We should be on a first-name basis with L&I inspectors for our area. Too often council staff serves as a buffer to the councilperson instead of a partner in helping to bring important issues directly to the councilperson.

Lou Iatarola, Tacony Civic Assoc.

Hi Everyone,

I am relatively new to the city of Philadelphia. As an observer, I see it has moments of great promise and great tragedy which seem to run concurrently.

I lead no civic group, but for sure I understand that my neighborhood of Harrowgate needs one & would love some tips on start up. I have heard of a neighborhood watch but do not even know how to contact them, when or where they meet.

WE are in severe need of leadership in this city, but I do see city council taking on some pretty decent cases in thier up coming calendar. I have seen them in action and think they are pretty good, especially when one looks at City Planning Commission and it's less than stellar performance.

The casino debacle has woken me up and I am motivated to try to organize. And yes, it is clear that keepgin civic groups co-operating with each other is important. So, any direction in forming one here would be helpful.

Thanks!
Jeannine S Missaoui
jeannine@compuwizards.com