Jannie Blackwell has introduced a bill to remove the Street-era $35 application fee for civil service jobs. I don't quite understand why it requires a charter change and November referendum -- did voters agree to add the fee in 2004? (I don't remember voting on it.)

Anyways, it makes sense to me. It doesn't cost the city much (maybe $1 million?) and it ultimately comes from people who are unemployed or who want to leave the private sector to work for the city. Any thoughts?

City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell has decided not to seek another term as majority leader. She has asked fellow council members who planned to vote for her to support Councilwoman Marian Tasco for the leadership position.

“Instead of fighting among ourselves, we should be spending our energy fighting for the people of Philadelphia. My hope is that by withdrawing from contention, I can help mend the spilt that now divides members into factions, and we can begin the Michael Nutter administration with a unified council,” Blackwell said.

I'm surprised that nobody's posted on this yet.

Jannie Blackwell finally dropped her opposition to the Youth Study Center- aka 'The Jail on the Parkway'- to move to West Philly, thereby making its current site available for the new Barnes Foundation museum. In return, the City will build a new recreation center, to bear the name of her late husband Lucien Blackwell, in her district.

In the meantime, Blackwell's block of the YSC's move to West Philly has cost the City tens of millions of dollars, both in money lost due to the delay in building + opening the new Barnes museum, + due to the cost of renovating the former Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute in East Falls to be a temporary home for the YSC.

The irony here is that, by blocking the move of the YSC to her district, Jannie Blackwell demonstrates how far short she falls of her late husband, the very person who is to be honored in the name of the new recreation center.

At least this has the potential to work out well for Philadelphia in both the near and long term. The shame is that it took so long to get to this inevitable conclusion.

-Z