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Notes from Council: President Clarke serves his humor dry; Councilman Bobby Henon's anti-blight campaign - different than the last anti-blight campaign?
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Notes from Council: President Clarke serves his humor dry; Councilman Bobby Henon's anti-blight campaign — different than the last anti-blight campaign?
Clarke: Dry as a funny bone.
We at City Paper have been developing a new appreciation for 5th District Councilman and Council President Darrell Clarke and his remarkable — almost unsettling — knack for humor so dry and subtle that it's not always entirely clear he's making a joke.
There was an offhand remark the Clarke made to Councilman David Oh on the second meeting of Council this year. Clarke had missed Oh's signal or skipped over him or something and said:
"I didn't quite know where you were, sir." — Which was either simply what it seemed to be or a deeply subtle reference to Oh's uncertain alignment in the political struggle for the presidency of Council. The jury is still out on that one.
There was Clarke's line when the mic went out during contentious testimony from AFSCME 33 union members at Council. Clarke's impromptu: "Is there an electrician in the house?" miiiight have been just a bit of cornpone; or it might have been an invocation of Philly politics and the looming role of IBEW boss Johnny Doc so deep my hairs stand on end in recollection.
Today, after Councilwoman Marian Tasco announced that she will be dancing on Dancing With the Stars to raise money for sickle cell anemia, Clarke seemed to (gently) rib his colleague and her dancing by thanking her for "that very informative" piece of news.
*
Henon: On a crusade to do something we were supposed to be doing already.
6th District Councilman Bobby Henon, the freshman city legislator replacing longtime Councilwoman Joan Krajewski, has made a pet issue out of going after blight. Today, he introduced a resolution, co-sponsored by many members of Council, calling for hearings to examine establishing a "problem property task force."
Blight is, of course, about as chronic a chronic problem in this city as any we have. But it's also a problem that seems to attract perennial promises of some new fixit plan.
Last year, as you may recall, we reported that the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections was embarking on a brave new campaign to go after private owners of blighted property using new tools and strategies, including investigating the owners and going after their assets if they owed the city money. The program was to begin with a pilot project in and around Port Richmond.
It seems like we haven't heard so much about that problem lately or whether it did, as intended, reach into the most blighted areas of the city rather than the less severe areas used in the pilot.
It's a question we're likely to hear answered — at Councilman Henon's hearing.
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