Citizens Get to Work as City Mourns
Last Friday morning, approximately 70 citizens trudged through the driving rain to the Klein Jewish Community Center in the northeast on the morning of Sgt. Liczbinski's funeral. Public Safety was on the minds of many of those in attendance of the fourth installment of the A City That Works Great Expectations forum. The crowd of citizens were all seniors (except for one twenty-something lady named Trina) and only a few had been to a previous Great Expectations forum. As a result of the funeral, the city's top brass who are normally present at the forums were not in attendance. Moderators Chris Satullo of the Inquirer and Harris Sokoloff of UPenn took on the responsibilities of answering questions regarding city services as best they could and collected note cards with yet more questions at the end of the meeting. District 10 Councilman Brian O'Neill dropped by for about 20 minutes before heading downtown for the funeral. While he couldn't stick around, one of his staffers, Bill Rapone, stayed behind to answer questions from the councilman's constituents.
The turnout was great and the interest in Public Safety was so great that two groups had to be formed. Sokoloff [above] picked up a marker and jumbo note pad and lead the group. But since I recently sat in on a Public Safety group, I listened in on the conversation with the Healthy and Sustainable Neighborhoods group. But before things got started, I was seated across the table from Harold who asked me: How will Philadelphia become the safest large city in America? He was reading one of the goals set by the Nutter administration. I told him that it would be a long process with a quarter of the city in poverty. He countered by saying that if people have jobs, there would be less crime as there would be less of a need to resort to crime as a means for survival. But where will those jobs come from.
The Neighborhoods discussion got off to a great start brainstorming as to what a healthy neighborhood looked like. One citizen called for a local spot to pay bills one citizen called for a local place to pay bills. She said that her family used to pay bills at a local Shop Rite; why couldn't a mini City Hall like the ones in the far NE and North Philly be opened in the area? A call for the local papers to act more as advocates for the citizens. But the conversation took a tangential stroll discussing litter – more trash cans, prettier trash cans, an argument over just cans or cans with plastic bags… I took the time to take a scan of the room to see what else people were talking about.
I saw Councilman O'Neill [above] talking with several constituents about things I was out of earshot to eavesdrop on. He had left by time I looked for him again later that morning but Rapone [below] remained and fielded questions.
Back to Neighborhoods and I heard Ruth wanting to see business owners intermingle with each other as well as getting more involved in the community. Another group member said that language barriers may prohibit such interaction. Ruth countered by saying everyone should learn English as immigrants in the past had done here in Philly. One group member said that her parents, who were immigrants, didn't want her to learn the language of her parents at all so that she wouldn't be at a disadvantage in school with the other kids; it's the opposite now she said. Arthur said that the Russians are the ones in the NE who are least likely to assimilate – why? Bernie hypothesized that the Irish and Italians were the same way when they first arrived, but now after being more comfortable in the area, are more open to intermingling. Just give the Russians more time he pleaded.
Satullo took to the mic after the brief lunch break to recap the morning and get the Q&A part of the meeting started. He asked each group what they accomplished and what they noticed when reading each other's notes. Maurice noticed people were all concerned with crime and traffic in the area. Beth, one of the Public Safety moderators, said that traffic was a large concern. With so many seniors in the area, crossing the large main roads was hazardous. The group complained that the traffic signals changed over too quickly and wanted the city to look into the issue. Satullo said that out of all the forums, this was the first time traffic came up as an issue on its own (I'm gonna guess a lot of people brought up traffic along with the casino issue too). Satullo's drive to the NE through the driving rain had him being a supporter of looking into the traffic situation in the area. Rapone, who at this point was not speaking on behalf of the Councilman, but as a fellow citizen (but slightly more in the know than the average Jane) said that traffic studies could be commissioned, but that they take a long time and could yield an unfavorable answer.
The Ethics group called for standards of service to be implemented across all departments. Satullo took the time between the groups reporting in and the full Q&A session to report on a trend in Philly in relation to the national economy. He said that Philadelphia tends to be a operate on a more even keel than the rest of the nation; when there are boons across the nation, Philadelphia's isn't as high and when a recession hits, Philadelphia doesn't get hit as hard. This, he said, was due to Philadelphia's very diverse local economy. To drive the point home even further, he reported that there weren't too many foreclosures in the city compared with the rest of the nation, but according to this Daily News article from the 12th, it may get much worse very soon.
Sticking on the subject of people's homes, Nate asked a rather touchy question, especially in front of an audience of fixed income seniors: Why wasn't the city performing a full valuation reassessment of homes for proper property tax collection? There was an audible near hiss from the crowd. Satullo answered the touchy question as best he could based on the response from previous forums. He said that the people in favor of these full valuations are usually those who would fare well and those against it are those who know they'll come out paying much much more each year. There were calls for protection for seniors if a full valuation taxation were to go into effect. Nate slunked down in his chair a bit.
Myles noticed lots of people concerned with the city needing more money and asked if the city would agree to an independent, outside of PA agency, audit of the city's books.
Rapone said that universities, newspapers and agencies perform such audits on their own dime from time to time, but it would be up to the mayor to ask for such an audit. I believe the City Council would then have to approve such an expense.
Warren noted that there were some $400M in uncollected real estate taxes owed to the city. He clarified that by saying the $400M was the deadbeats sitting on parcels of land and not the people living paycheck to paycheck falling behind on payments who need real assistance, not penalties. He wanted to see the city aggressively go after the deadbeats for a hunk of change which could possibly pay the salaries and pensions of hundreds of new cops. Rapone suggested that prior administrations had not gone after the monies because the city had enough money to not go after it. But now as the budget is tighter than in the past, the city needs the money more and Mayor Nutter may be the one to go after it in a more aggressive manner.
I had to leave a few minutes early due to my reading of the schedule incorrectly a few days prior to the event. Unfortunately, I had made a reservation for my PhillyCarShare to end before all was said and done. Off I went, back into the rain, but I'll be at another forum in North Philly to hear what's on the minds of another group of Philadelphians looking to make the city a better place.
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May 18th, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
this was a really good article. People getting involved in the community is the only way positive change will come about. It would be nice for those actively involved to focus on expanding community participation instead of say, expanding the police force or making sure trash cans were prettier or had liners.