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City Council President Darrell Clarke told reporters he could offer no reaction to Mayor Michael Nutter's budget address — because he had not seen it and was not invited to it after Nutter relocated to the Mayor's Reception Room when union members booed him out of City Council chambers. "The budget address is given to Council. That is our format. If he chooses to give it to someone else, that is his prerogative," Clarke said.
There was a bit of substantive talk: Clarke, who has been pushing to find new ways to generate revenue without raising taxes, such as advertising on municipal property and selling off public land more efficiently, seemed to support the Mayor's proposal not to raise taxes for additional school district funding. "At some point, that conversation has to go back to the state," he said.
Mayor Michael Nutter is giving his budget address from the Mayor's Reception Room after being drowned out by union protesters who were chanting, blowing whistles and creating general mayhem in City Council chambers this morning. City Council conducted its business before the mayor entered — a good thing since the session was recessed after Nutter was effectively driven out of the room.
Chants included: "No contract, no peace," and "Hey hey hey, goodbye," and the classic, "asshole."
Protesters from the city's municipal labor unions and allied trade groups packed CIty Hall today for the Mayor's much anticipated and controversial budget address. While many observers had expected strong protests from unions - most of whom have been working without a contract for years - it still came as a surprise when the crowd used noisemakers, shouts and boos to derail the address altogether.
As Mayor Michael Nutter entered council chambers, a chorus of applause, boos, whistles and — possibly — electronic sirens filled the hall. While Council President Darrell Clarke vainly struck his gavel, calling for order, Nutter actually attempted to deliver his speech, screaming over the ear-splitting noise.
After a few minutes of sustained racket, Councilman-at-Large David Oh called for an emergency recess, a move that was quickly seconded and approved by fellow members. Nutter continued his speech, his voice hoarse, as Councilmembers filed out of the hall. Nutter eventually gave up and was escorted by police officers to the Council President's chambers.
City Council this morning voted to pass legislation championed by Councilman Bill Greenlee mandating employers in Philly to provide paid sick leave for workers, over opposition from the business community. Mayor Nutter, who previously vetoed similar legislation, is expected to veto this bill as well. The bill passed 11-6, which would not stand up to a veto. Voting against the bill were Brian O'Neill, Denny O'Brien, Jim Kenney, Mark Squilla, David Oh, and Bill Green.
The discussion was contentious, as expected. Greenlee, speaking before the vote, asked Council: "Will we say 'yes' that a key aspect of this bill is about health? … Or will we say 'no,' like the Nutter administration said 'no'? And they're getting pretty good at saying no. They even refused to let the Health Commissioner testify before the public health committee of this council. … I guess health is only an issues when they want it to be. The way something like binding arbitration is only an issue when they want it to be."
Greenlee noted that the bill had been amended 23 times to accommodate requests from the business community. But, he brought up the topic of disrespect by employers who insist workers will abuse their sick leave. "Studies show the average worker takes much less time than is allotted. Is somebody trying to say that workers in Philadelphia are less honest than in other cties?"
Restaurant workers and union members alike spoke in favor of the bill this morning in City Council, ahead of the mayor's budget address. One restaurant worker said he had cut himself slicing tomatoes in the kitchen, then worked three more hours while bleeding from his hand because his employer would not let him leave.
By 9 a.m., a few hundred city union workers were lining up to get into City Hall for Mayor Nutter's annual budget address, which they're once again protesting. But many were turned away. Officers were outside Council chambers with a list of names marked for entry (and members of the press who weren't on the list and didn't have official press passes were chastised but eventually admitted).
Outside, an AFSCME DC 33 member holding a broom that said "Pay Raise" on the end, a sign saying, "It's time for a fair contract," and a flag on a wooden pole said he'd been denied entry because his signs could be used as weapons. He was urging union members to gain access with their city IDs.
The union is making hay of this security decision, sending out an email that begins:
Nutter has a new tactic not seen in Philadelphia since King George banned the right to assemble – Nutter is restricting access to today’s Budget Address. There’s now a “Friends of Nutter” list of those deigned loyal enough to enter a public building for a public hearing.
Inside City Council chambers, union members packed the galleries holding signs that say "Mayor Bozo" and "How about collecting the money we owe?" and chanting: "What do we want? Contracts! When do we want them? Now."
A change to the city's zoning code that goes into effect March 25 will not only put a greater burden on developers, but it could also cost civic groups thousands of dollars per year, some South Philly zoning activists are arguing. The legislation, part of Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell's reforms to the just-reformed zoning code, has already yielded complaints from developers, since it could effectively undo efforts to streamline the community-feedback process by requiring Registered Community Organizations (RCOs) to hold joint meetings when projects are proposed within overlapping neighborhood jurisdictions. Now, as the legislation is about to come into effect, some RCOs are realizing just how burdensome the new rules could be for them.
"Council has severely underestimated the cost and hardship that Bill 120889 places on the Registered Community Organizations (RCO) that it had hoped to empower," begins a letter that's now circulating among civic groups. The crux of their complaint: The law requires notification to go out to every property within nine blockfaces of a project before a community zoning meeting takes place. David Goldfarb, zoning chair of the East Passyunk Crossing Civic Association, figures that at three zoning appeals per month, that adds up to $518 per year in printing costs. But if RCOs have to mail the information, the price could be $3,700 per year. That's based on the assumption that there are approximately 180 buildings in nine blockfaces, and all of the owners and residents would have to be notified for each project.
"The motivation of the bill was an honorable and good one, but there was not an understanding of the cost or the obstacles that we'd have in flyering, including the city code that prevents us giving flyers to anyone who has a 'No Flyers' sticker. We could be fined for that," he says. Plus, as a neighborhood group working on beautification, contributing flyers to other sidewalk litter seems rather hypocritical. It is, of course, against the law to put a flyer inside a mailbox. "The only way that I can tell to actually meet the requirements of the bill is to mail. I'm positive that's not the intention." He thinks requiring groups to post notice on telephone poles instead would be a more pragmatic fix.
Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir
Labor activists are delivering a "petition to City Council urging council members to stand with Philadelphia’s working families, not corporate lobbyists" ahead of tomorrow's vote on legislation that would require many employers to offer employees paid sick leave.
Activists have recently focused their campaign on Comcast, which spent $108,429.25 lobbying Council on paid sick leave in 2012, according to Philadelphia's Media Mobilizing Project.
The petition is signed by 60,000 people, including 14,000 who identified themselves as Comcast customers.
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
Spanning the Powelton Yards and Schuylkill River at Powelton Avenue -- Where it would be if it was ever built? Original aerial from Google.
Ya know, it's one thing to have a Dead-Ass Proposal that was active for five, 10 or even 20 years. That's shitty in itself. But a Dead-Ass Proposal brought up again and again and AGAIN over the course of nearly 90 years? That's rigoddamndiculous!!!! Well, that's this one. This bridge proposal was attempted numerous times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and failed every last time. This is the Powelton Avenue Bridge.
Brainchild of a Badass
The first time a Powelton Avenue Bridge was suggested was in 1869. The Common Council of the City of Philadelphia passed a resolution on April 17th of that year, asking for plans regarding several bridge-related projects, including a bridge spanning the Schuylkill at Powelton Avenue. They got a response by the great city engineer/surveyor Stickland Kneass, who had just spent five years completing his masterpiece, the great cast-iron Chestnut Street Bridge. This Kneass guy was a badass who must have been able to see the future. He was the son of an engraver for the U.S. Mint and was personally educated by one of the world's top scientists. He knew that the existing Schuylkill crossings of his time would never be enough to serve all the traffic of the distant decades to come.
Follow on twitter @rw_briggs
Some fact checking by WHYY's Dave Davies revealed that a Washington D.C. tax report ranking Philadelphia as the city with the second highest taxes for families contained faulty property tax data that apparently made us look worse than we are. The City Paper covered this report last week.
A spokesmen for Washington D.C.'s municipal Office of the Budget, which assembled the report, said that they relied on official data from each city examined in the survey and, understandably, did not conduct an independent review of all 51 cities' own statistics on taxation for accuracy. Philadelphia's official numbers appear to have been out of date and not reflective of average property tax payments.
Follow on twitter @rw_briggs
The Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania announced today that it was suing the state Department of Corrections for violating the Eighth Amendment, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. The suit alleges that the use of "Restricted Housing Units" (RHUs), better known as solitary confinement, is unconstitutional when applied to seriously mentally ill prisoners, something the DRN claims is standard practice in Penna. correctional facilities.
In a press release today, the DRN outlined abusive practices that it says adversely affects some 800 prisoners that are diagnosed as mentally ill, but who continue to be punished with solitary confinement for behavior that is often a manifestation of their illness. The group alleges that the state is aware that solitary confinement can "exacerbate the symptoms of mental illness", causing "sleeplessness, hallucinations, and paranoia", but continues the punishment nonetheless. In worst case scenarios, solitary confinement has been known to catalyze self-destructive behavior, like head-banging, cutting and suicide attempts The suit says such behavior is often perversely addressed with more RHU time. Nearly half of all prison suicides nationwide occur while the incarcerated are being held in solitary.
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