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At the final session of City Council in December, then-presumed (now-official) Council President Darrell Clarke wasted no time in setting the agenda for the year to come. He introduced two bills — one, a plan to provide for the leasing of ad space on municipal properties like City Hall, and the other, perhaps even more important, a proposal to create "Development Districts," where blighted property can be sold off at as much as 90 percent below market rates (and which the Committee of Seventy has already singled out as a potential field day for Councilmanic prerogative).
The bills are actually part of a seven-point plan (though there maybe as many as 10 elements total among the proposals) to raise revenue and reduce costs citywide, resulting in a purported $40 million to $50 million benefit to Philly's bottom line. Clarke, along with a "senior corps of City Council members," can be expected to pursue all seven proposals in the near future, according to his legislative aide, William Carter. The other points of the plan are: leasing on-street spots in non-metered locations to car shares via a bidding process; the creation of a coordinated street furniture program run by a private operator (worth $2 million annually); an expanded franchise and concession program that could include vendors and the hosting of telecommunications infrastructure ($15 million annually); municipal asset sales (worth $100 million total); and retrofitting municipal buildings for energy savings (worth $2 million annually).
Municipal asset sales, according to the plan, would be pursued in an "aggressive and systematic" manner, (partly due to Philly's burden of pension debt). The $100 million figure, or $5 million per year, counts the long-term lease or sale of technology, vehicles, "major parks, roads, bridges and buildings." (The city's 2012 fiscal year operating budget projects only $2.5 million in asset sales.) Concessions — including food and souvenir vendors, activity or equipment rental providers in public plazas and parks, such as Fairmount Park — could be driven by "increasing seating at concession stands, expanding the types allowed and incentivizing more profitable concessions."
A comprehensive street furniture program managed by a private vendor and funded by ad sales — a notion that has been floated in the past but never enacted in Philly — could include bus shelters, public restrooms and benches, according to the proposal, which references Boston and Toronto as potential benchmarks. "The city is currently reviewing street furniture form the standpoint of design guidelines and potential sites," according to the plan.
Most drastic is the development district proposal. The bill Clarke introduced would enable the Redevelopment Authority to transfer qualified properties within such districts at a 50 percent discount if 10 percent to 20 percent of land in the census tract is vacant, tax delinquent and publicly owned (or even if it only meets two of those criteria). The discount would be 70 percent if 20 percent or more of the land meets two or more of those characteristics; it would be 90 percent where 30 percent of the land fits the bill. The proposal also calls for a lien to be placed on such properties for the amount of the discount, which would be in default if builders failure to start construction within six months of the sale date.
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