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City Council calls for moratorium on school closings, overrides veto on zoning
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City Council calls for moratorium on school closings, overrides veto on zoning
Rested from their winter vacation, City Council members were fired up today over a number of issues. Among them: Whether to override a veto by Mayor Nutter of a change to civic groups' role in the zoning process, and whether to demand a yearlong moratorium on school closings, a hot-button issue that brought out dozens of protesters.
Council voted 13-3 to override the mayor's veto on updated rules for Registered Community Organizations (RCOs) that would, among other things, increase the demands on developers to notify the community of projects and put a greater burden on the generally volunteer-run civic groups to notify residents of meetings. The bill was passed in the first place against the advice of the City Planning Commission.
Councilman Bill Green said the bill would create "notice requirements that are almost impossible to legally comply with. They will hold up projects in the courts for years. ... This will create legal road blocks to development and job creation." Most dramatically: "We will all rue the day when this veto was overridden."
Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who introduced the bill, said it represented a compromise the administration had agreed to previously.
There were also plenty of fireworks over whether to demand a moratorium on proposed public-school closings, which have drawn protests around the city. The plan to close 37 schools to deal with the 70,000 empty classroom seats in the district. Council members seemed to agree the district is going about it all wrong. Councilman Curtis Jones said, "The bean counters of the world can draw maps, but if you don't know the difference between Parkside and Parkway, that crossing those two can cause a public safety hazard, you are putting our children in danger."
Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez found herself being booed by public-school advocates for arguing that a moratorium without funding to accompany it was irresponsible. "I'm prepared to discuss additional funding in a responsible way and then discuss a moratorium," she said. Anything else "represents a zero-sum game."
Sanchez said tough decisions will be necessary. "This is an opportunity. This is the perfect storm for us to deal with the full funding of education. We need to go to Harrisburg" to see that that is done."
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