This Saturday, "It's Our Money" will be teaming up with "It's Our City" to record a half hour program on the budget crisis.

Dave Davies will interview the mayor and want also want questions from you. What would you ask Mayor Nutter about the budget crisis if you had the chance?

As you probably know, Philadelphia is facing a deficit of $108 million
for FY09 and a potential shortfall of $1 billion over the next five
years. Mayor Nutter has announced drastic budget cuts, including
shutting down 20% of the city's libraries, closing almost all pools
during the summer, ending residential street cleaning, and more.

Does anyone have bold steps that Philadelphia could take to deal with
the fiscal crisis, as an alternative to the service cuts and other
measures being proposed by Nutter?

For example: city taxpayers pick up the tab for the First Judicial
District of Pennsylvania, even though the court system is supposed to
be funded by the state. Want if Mayor Nutter simply said no? It would
save the city about $116 million and send a powerful message to
Harrisburg.

Do you have suggestions for bold ideas to deal with the budget crisis?

WHYY's It's Our City has a pretty interesting video on the fate of Philly's Curfew Centers:

Fate of Philadelphia curfew centers uncertain from whyyphila on Vimeo.

The video shows Donald Schwartz, the Deputy Mayor for Health and Opportunity, discussing the Curfew Centers at a Philly Stat meeting. Basically, the punchline is that while the curfew centers are supposed to take kids off the street as an anti-violence program, the time in which youth violence generally occurs is right after school, not after 10.30PM on weeknights, and midnight on the weekends... And, while the City has made 4,000 referrals of kids to social services, they have only confirmed that 41 have actually been connected to those services.

Of course, if 4,000 referrals for social services were made, that means that the curfew centers are finding at-risk kids, correct? So, maybe the issue should be why so few kids (that we know of) actually got connected to the services they need.

We recored the first It's Our Money podcast and it is now posted on our site. I thought YPP readers might be interested because it features Helen Gym, a frequent commenter on YPP. Helen is joined by Wayne Harris, who is the budget director for the School District of Philadelphia.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking here. You can also subscribe to the feed through iTunes or any other podcasting software.

Tomorrow is the final opportunity for the public to testify about the mayor's proposed operating budget. If you'd like to tell City Council how you think our money should be spent, this is your chance!

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 2:30pm. There will be a break at 4:30pm and then testimony will resume at 5:30pm. Right now, the hearing is scheduled to last until 7:00pm but it may run later depending on how many people come to testify.

I've been told that the afternoon slots are all filled, but there is still space in the evening. To get your name on the list, e-mail Sharon Ortiz at sharon.c.ortiz@phila.gov or call 215-686-3407.

If you can't make it to the hearing, be sure to speak your piece in our "Testify!" thread on It's Our Money