As everyone knows, Dominic Pileggi has decided to hold up a one-cent sales tax hike in Philadelphia because he's in a pissing match with Governor Ed Rendell. Pileggi says Philly wants a bailout, which is pretty funny coming from a guy who's getting $45 million from the state for a soccer stadium in Chester, one of the most depressed cities in the entire country.

Please visit the Philly Weekly, where Sean Dorn and I catalog the carnage: http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/brendan-calling/Domin...

So much for the "law and order" party:

Drug Education & Law Enforcement -100%

Violence Prevention - 100%

Police on Patrol - 100%

Safe Neighborhoods - 100%

Got cancer? Epilepsy? A sick child? Dominic says "Go to hell!" Oh, and "GOOOOOOOALLLLLLLL!"

Regional Cancer Centers - 100%

Tourette Syndrome - 100%

Hemophilia - 100%

Epilepsy - 100%

Protect families, children, and investments in stronger communities by raising your voice for a state budget that supports Pennsylvanians.

TUESDAY, August 11
12 noon
MEDIA, PA, Courthouse
201 Front Street (Front Street and Veteran's Square)

Join us in the legislative district of some of the leading voices in the state budget battle (and loudest proponents of budget cuts - such as State Senator Dominic Pileggi.)

Featuring speakers from education, child care, business, housing, prevention services, health, children's healthcare, disability rights, community development, the arts and more.

Sponsored by:
Public Citizens for Children and Youth, Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children, ActionAIDS, Pathways PA, Pennsylvania Head Start Association, Pennsylvania Council of Churches, Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, Pennsylvania ACORN, Media Arts Council and more...

On June 23, the Daily News editorial "We want the bad news too" requested details from the Nutter administration regarding its infamous "Plan B" budget that would take effect if the State failed to okay the City's proposed sales tax increase.

Fifteen days later, Harrisburg has yet to act, and the "Plan B" option -- described by sources in and out of City Hall as "apocalyptic" -- looms ever closer to reality. And still we know nothing more about the apparently services-blasting details.

Worse: unless I missed it, during the intervening days, there's been no echoing call from City Council, or anywhere else in government, to make Plan B public.

Well, it's time to make the Daily News' original request a demand.

As Ben Waxman's column rightly states, "It's Our Money" too, so we demand that Mayor Nutter lets us know how it's going to be spent, or not spent.

We demand to see Plan B.

Thanks to Hannah for already linking to this New York Times article, but this really is worth a more in-depth look:

PHILADELPHIA — Mayor Michael A. Nutter said Tuesday that Philadelphia would have to raise taxes or fees to close its budget deficit.

"We can’t just cut our way out of this situation," Mr. Nutter said in an interview with WHYY radio. "We will have to consider very seriously some form of revenue enhancement."

This new rhetoric from the Mayor comes following the publication of PennPraxis’ report on the recent citywide budget hearings. The summary of the talks is incredibly encouraging of the sensibility and humanity of a majority of Philadelphians – and not surprising for those of us on YPP who commissioned a poll months back that yielded similar conclusions. The difference is of course that this report hit the national news as a city that is demanding other options.

The report says that the majority of people:

• don't want services cut

• will pay more in taxes if they have to

• want to ease the tax burden on low-income people

• and would consider alternative correction opportunities for non-violent offenders if it could mean closing a city jail.

"Given a chance to confront the tough tradeoffs, most citizens opted to tax themselves — while struggling to give a tax break to those less fortunate," said a report by the Project for Civic Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, which organized the meetings.

Working groups concluded that residents would be prepared — though reluctant — to pay higher taxes on sales, wages, real estate transfers, businesses and parking, said the report, published late Monday.

That's pretty amazing.

What’s most encouraging though is that in times of crisis, people want to know that government is there to take care of core and essential services that benefit and protect not only the majority of its residents but especially the most vulnerable.

It's great to be a part of this city.

This Saturday is Valentines Day, and what Philadelphia institution is more deserving of a little love than our beleagured branch libraries?

Celebrate Philadelphia's great public libraries at the following branches this Saturday, february 14, 2009. See below for an earlier event at the Ogontz Branch

Haddington - 446 N. 65th Street
1-3pm : Arts & Crafts for the Whole Family

Fishtown - 1217 E. Montgomery Avenue
3-4:30pm : Library Celebration & Arts Workshop

Kingsessing - 1201 S. 51st Street
1-3pm : Friends of the Library Celebration

Wadsworth - 1500 Wadsworth Avenue
2-4pm : Arts & Crafts for the Whole Family

Durham - 3320 Haverford Avenue
12-3pm : We Love Our Library Fun Day!

Queen Memorial - 1201 S. 23rd Street
1pm : Valentine's Day Poetry Party

PLEASE NOTE THIS EARLY EVENT!
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 13th* - 6017 Ogontz Avenue
Ogontz - 3-4:30pm - Valentine's Party

When I was six years old, my mother took me to the library in Vineland, New Jersey. She pointed me to a stack of Hardy Boy books and said, “Pick five. ” That started my love affair with libraries. (Throughout my childhood, I have had a recurring fantasy of being accidentally locked in a library overnight. There’s something about being surrounded by bookshelves that really gets me going.)

More at www.phillygrrl.com.

What: Rally to express opposition to the administration's plan to close 11 libraries
Who: The Black Clergy of Philadelphia & Vicinity
When: Monday, December 22, 2008 at 1:00 p.m.
Where: Main Library on the Ben Franklin Parkway

Below is a letter from the Black Clergy regarding the rally (a PDF version of the letter is attached to this post).

Please come out to the rally to support the libraries!

Seth Levi
Office of Councilman Bill Green
215-686-3420
seth.levi@phila.gov

-------------------------------

Greetings Co-Laborer and Concerned Citizen:

Due to the increasing public outcry over the proposed library closings in the City of Philadelphia as a way of dealing with the City's budget deficit, Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity finds that we must stand in opposition. Having considered the process and rationale as put forth by the Mayor's office, we still find the proposal highly objectionable.

Consider the following points:

Siobhan Reardon is very new to Philadelphia. She was brought here by the Free Library's Board and Trustees to finish the work of fundraising for the Moshe Safdie designed expansion of the Central Branch. Immediately upon arriving in Philadelphia she made an incognitio tour of all branches with a predetermined agenda of closing "weak" libraries (her words). The idea is that for years budget cutting has meant that the labor pool is stretched thin across the FLP system. With less library branches, services can be concentrated at the "strong" branches with the smaller labor pool that the city is able to fund.

I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but from a highly educated middle class perspective most of these 11 branches are "weak" because their patron base is either too poor or too powerless to demand better services. While at the same time, the Central Branch or other higher profile "strong" branches have to share labor and material resources with these "weak" branches. This makes fundraising difficult if Central, City Institute, Chestnut Hill, Lovett, or any number of Northeast branches don't satisfy the needs of the wealthiest and most powerful Philadelphians.

The financial crisis has mostly served as a cover for a decision that had already been made by Reardon shortly after coming to Philadelphia. This is why we are getting such confusing opposition to the Friends' demand of a shared burden of reduced services, or why there seems to be such a lack of transparency. The only thing the city is forced by financial circumstance to do for budget cutting is to lay off workers (librarians, paraprofessionals, guards, etc) since their salaries and benefits make up the majority of the costs. Librarians and our professional associations will be hostile to the idea of managing libraries without degreed professionals, but that probably isn't even necessary.

There's also the canard that since Philadelphia's population has declined since its peak at 2 million in 1960, we can afford to "right-size". However, Philadelphia only had 39 branches in 1960. Some may say given that fact Philadelphia is then even more over saturated with libraries. But that's ridiculous. Several generations of tax-dollars have gone into an investment in our communities during the ensuing 50 year decline in population. Now we are now trying to squander investment in building up our neighborhoods despite decline, mostly because the FLP Administration is now committed to redistributing library services upward. It's theft! The intent of building branches from 1891 to 1960 and beyond was to build branches for neighborhoods, not simply to maintain some bogus national level of libraries per arbitrary geo-political boundary. Our system is being compared with young sun-belt suburban "cities" where everyone drives and frankly more people have attained higher degrees and reasonably could be said to not need to use "the People's University" as frequently as those on the other side of the wealth (let alone digital) divide. That we have the system that we do should not only be a point of pride, it should also be recognized as one of the few non-dehumanizing institutions of the "State" in many neighborhoods that poor people actually enjoy interacting with.

The administrators claim they want to create bookmobiles as a new innovative 21st century way of better serving the communities who will suffer when their branch closes. But book mobiles are really the ultimate insult to a dense urban community such as ours. They're better suited for rural and perhaps third-world situations where communities are too sparsely populated or resource-poor to be able to build libraries. We may be in a global financial crisis but do we need start dismantling our civic infrastructure at this point? The administration is basically saying Kingsessing should be treated like rural North Dakota: "Too few readers, too few tax dollars to sustain a library? Let's send the bookmobile every other week to the urban prairie we just bulldozed under Neighborhood Transformation Initiative!" Philadelphians paid for these buildings or we fought for them or they were given as gifts, we can't let the administrators take them away just to put some polish on branches in the most functional neighborhoods.

This is how Mike Nutter ended his It's Our City interview with Dave Davies (around Minute 42 on the video):

People will have to decide. You know, do you want to be a populist, or do you want to be a leader? Do you just want to be talking? Or do you want to show strength and leadership under very difficult circumstances. Leadership requires you to make tough choices, not just run your mouth.

So, I think that were more than willing and open. We don't assume that we have all the ideas or all of the answers. As long as people want to engage in a dialogue that is legitimate about how you want to close massive holes...

First, the very first definition of populist that comes up is this:

A supporter of the rights and power of the people.

And, so, that would be a bad thing to be, for a big city Mayor? (Let's assume that he more means a demagogue, and move on.)

Second, Nutter is willing to assume that he doesn't have all the answers? So why do we have town hall meetings where the Administration is basically saying that the cuts are the cuts are the cuts. (And that, of course, is after after making those cuts in secret, after withholding the super-duper secret information that were theoretically used to make them.) Where does he actually ask people for their ideas, and where does he show he will consider them? Certainly not at town hall meetings.

This whole thing is beyond bizarre. And, really, if I hear the Office Space Routine one more time...

And, Oliver said, one of the administration's primary points is that the library system is too big and needs to be pruned.

...I am going to flip out. So really, they wanted to cut libraries all along? I guess I missed Candidate Nutter's plan to cut libraries during the Mayoral campaign?

From his campaign website, in fact, we get this:

THE FREE LIBRARY

In 2005, the City announced that twenty branch libraries would shift to half-day service and many head librarians would be laid-off. Library supporters protested the "reorganization plan." Councilman Nutter called for an investigation to evaluate the Library System and to find additional funding in order to restore this essential City service. After a five hour hearing, which was attended by a capacity crowd of students, library supporters and employees, restoring library funding became a critical issue during that year's budget discussions. City Council eventually rejected the budget cut, restored funding, and returned all branch libraries to full-day service with head librarians.

Is that just down the memory hole? Are we not supposed to remember?

I voted for Mike Nutter to become Mayor because I thought that while I would have some ideological differences with him, his desire for openness, transparency and citizen participation would provide enough buffer to make sure that, whether he liked it or not, he would be...

A supporter of the rights and power of the people.

Thus far, this has not really worked out like I had hoped.

This evening, I headed over to the rally at the Fishtown Library, organized by AJ Thomson. It was a pretty incredible scene for something that happened on about 24 hours notice, through word of mouth, emails, flyers, etc. I am not good at crowd estimates, but lets just say that on a chilly November night, there were hundreds of people, demanding that Mayor Nutter spare their library.

(And, by the way, if you are from Fishtown, you are losing a fire engine, a library, and a pool? Nice.)

The anger and disappointment in the crowd was self-evident. Kids from neighborhood schools prepared letters to the Mayor, asking him not to close down their library. The more I stood out there, watching as people were forced to desperately scramble just to keep a damn library open, the more the whole thing seemed so damn ridiculous and sad. It is a really great message that we are sending to our kids...

The City I believe in does not give residents a tax cut while closing libraries, de-funding Fairmount Park, cutting back police and fire coverage, and shutting down public schools. Don't you think the people of Fishtown would rather their taxes be kept the same, rather than cut by 0.2%, if it meant their services kept open?

I will say it a million times between now and December: Keep our taxes the same. Save the City.

On February 14th, Mayor Nutter delivered his first budget to Council and announced that funding for Camp William Penn would cease from the 2009 Fiscal year. For those readers that don't know what Camp William Penn (is/was) a residential summer camp in the Pocano mountains, owned by and substantial funded by the City of Philadelphia through taxation.