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Archive: March, 2012
As we posted earlier, Mayor Nutter today announced a new regulation that would ban "outdoor feeding" — a phrase which refers to the free meals given out to the homeless and hungry — in all city parks in Philadelphia. The mayor says food distribution will be allowed on City Hall's apron by permitted groups for the next year.
A press release from the mayor's press office also said that "the Mayor created a working group of external stakeholders and senior Administration staff" to come up with a plan to help those who eat outdoors move inside over the next 90 days.
But (as we noted earlier) at least some food distributors feel left out: Brian Jenkins, president of Chosen 300 ministries, which runs meal programs six days a week and continues one of the largest private meal programs, says he was never contacted by the administration or invited to be part of any working group.
It turns out that he's not the only "external stakeholder" who's not part of the working group: in fact, no one else is either so far. Asked about the composition of the working group the mayor had "created," mayor spokesman Mark McDonald told Hall Monitor in an email that:
"We've created the group but have not assigned outside stakeholder members to it yet."
Two words stand out in that sentence: "assigned," a word which contrasts with its softer counterpart "invited," — and "yet," which means that the mayor announced this proposed regulation well ahead of forming the group tasked with engaging the parties most affected by it.
Project Home's Sister Mary Scullion appeared alongside the mayor at his press conference today. She says that it was "a risk" to appear with the mayor for the announcement, but that "this is an opportunity to move the ball forward" on hunger.
She says she's looking forward to the formation of the mayor's working group but that she won't be on it: "I'm going to form my own group to evaluate, 'Did people really come through?'"
McDonald did mention two administration members that will be part of the group: Health Commissioner Donald Schwartz and Parks & Rec Commissioner Michael DiBerardinis. It's within Schwartz's office that a proposed regulation by the Board of Health would impose new food safety restrictions on outdoor meals; it's within DiBerardinis' office that the mayor's new proposed regulation on any feeding in parks would go into effect.
By November, Pennsylvania's new voter ID law will be in place. The legislation passed out of the General Assembly today, and Gov. Tom Corbett has said he's eager to sign it into law. So eager, in fact, that in addition to a $1 million budget for non-driver PennDOT identification cards carved out of his painfully austere proposed fiscal 2012 budget, legislators said the governor has found more funds to drive senior citizens to PennDOT to get their newly necessary ID cards. Rep. Mike O'Brien, a Philadelphia Democrat, says the bill will cost Pennsylvania at least $11 million to implement, and is likely to disenfranchise 700,000 Pennsylvanians.
While Rep. Michelle Brownlee, a Philly Democrat, invoked civil rights struggles from the past ("people died for the right to vote"), House Democratic Leader Rep. Frank Dermody was more concerned about the nuts and bolts of the fresh barricade to voting rights. It will cost anywhere from $10 to $150 to get the paperwork necessary for a voter ID, he said, not to mention the cost to the state at a time when deep cuts are being made to education and social spending. "It is not free. This is a stealth poll tax," Dermody said. "The goal of this bill is to suppress voter turnout in Pennsylvania in a presidential election year."
Philly Democratic Rep. Babette Josephs said the allegations of voter fraud she's heard so far have gone mysteriously unreported, which "goes to the credibility of those people" claiming fraud is an issue. "This huge massive voter impersonation scheme, cabal, syndicate that's overwhelming our elections in Pennsylvania, but no one reports it?"
Whether this bill will solve a real problem in Philly and the Commonwealth, we'll never know. Despite claims to the contrary, confirmed reports of fraud are hard to come by in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
This morning, Mayor Nutter announced a "regulation" imposing a citywide ban on outdoor "feeding" (it's not his term, but it does give Hall Monitor the willies; you might prefer the less zoo-like phrase "food sharing" or "food distribution") in Philadelphia city parks.
The ban will go into effect in 30 days and will not affect family picnics or permitted events.
Nutter also announced a "temporary food distribution" location at City Hall, where port-o-potties and water will be provided; "outdoor feeders" (yech!) will be required to sign up and reserve days to serve food there.
This comes while the city's Board of Health is still considering a regulation that would have required "outdoor feeders" (yech!) — most of whom are volunteers from churches, individuals, or members of Philly Food Not Bombs to meet certain food safety standards. That bill, ostensibly less stringent since it didn't ban the practice outright, has been hotly opposed by several groups.
That bill has formed part of a backdrop of what many homeless advocates see as the city's gradually trying to reduce the homeless presence on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and near City Hall. As construction of the new Barnes Foundation museum has been underway on the Parkway, several homeless individuals with whom CP spoke said not long ago who were sleeping nearby said that they felt they were being pushed gradually away. In the mayor's budget address last week, he announced a plan for a major renovation of Love Park — probably the last major gathering place of the homeless since Dilworth Plaza went under construction.
Among those opposed to the new proposed regulation is Brian Jenkins, president of Chosen 300 Ministries, a network of 73 churches around the region and internationally. Chosen 300 serves meals to homeless individuals 6 days a week in three locations around Philadelphia (only one of those is outdoors). Jenkins believes it's the single largest private meal program in Philadelphia.
Jenkins says that his coalition is "definitely opposed" to the proposed regulation, and questions the administration's motive in establishing regulations that so clearly affect the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which the administration hopes to see revitalized as a tourist attraction.
Jenkins calls the mayor's push to end outdoor food distribution in parks a civil rights issue."
Jenkins also says the administration hasn't reached to work with those who engage in the food distribution. While the mayor announced today that he has created a "working group of external stakeholders," Jenkins says that he, for one, was never contacted.
"The amazing part is that I haven't been invited — and I have the largest feeding organization in the city of Philadelphia."
After Chinatown neighbors got organized and got the Callowhill Neighborhood Improvement District defeated, City Council President Darrell Clarke made what seemed like a brilliant move in proposing his North Central Neighborhood Improvement District: the NID would not levy taxes on single-family owner-occupied homes.
Clarke envisioned the NID as a vital booster shot for the area economy, taxing commercial properties in return for increased public safety, greening, cleaning and other services. And many local landlords and developers say it’s critical to their investments — and they’re willing to pay to support it. What Clarke apparently didn't count on was that residents of the area would take that exclusion from the tax (which they don't want to pay, of course) as disenfranchisement, going so far as to circulate petitions calling the proposal a "Negro Removal District." At the first of two City Council hearings on the matter today, some residents of the neighborhood told Council’s Rules Committee they see the NID as an avenue to taxing them in the future, or even acquiring their properties by eminent domain. At the least, many see it as the city turning over power to Temple University, developers and area landlords. Lessie Drummond, who owns two rental properties in North Central, told the committee: “We need help, but we do not need to be controlled.”
By the end of the hearing, Clarke announced — among other amendments to the bill — that the words "class" and "power" would be removed from the legislation. “Class,” he admitted, “was probably not a good choice of words” to include in a bill dealing with fraught neighborhood politics in the vicinity of Temple University — even though “class” had referred to classifications of NID directors — not to, say, classes of residents of the area, which has seen endemic poverty and crime run up against typical town-and-gown issues as Temple has outgrown its old commuter-school status.
A weekly series of foulmouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other development and design phenomena in Phlladelphia. Find more stories like this at philaphilia.blogspot.com.
PENN SQUARE/CENTRE SQUARE/CITY HALL SQUARE -- It's a pretty much foregone conclusion that Paul Phillippe Cret was a bit off his rocker. That didn't stop him from designing some of the most badass stuff this city has ever seen. What a lot of people don't realize is that this nutty motherfucker had even more wacky plans to turn this city into Crazy Cretworld that never came to fruition (and rightly so).
In the 1920s, Philadelphia was going through a massive conversion. The rise of the automobile was beginning to shape our antiquated city. Cret, along with fellow Frenchy Jacques Greber, designed what would come to be known as the Ben Franklin Parkway to help facilitate automotive movement in and out of the city's core. Instead of just making it a highway, they envisioned a tree-lined boulevard that would house the city's greatest institutions. A Champs Elysee for Philadelphia.
You might think the political universe now stands upon its head: the Commonwealth Foundation, a potent conservative force in Pennsylvania politics, is criticizing a labor union for being too tough on crime.
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, amidst a growing nationwide movement of conservatives (under the banner “Right on Crime”) embracing criminal justice reform, has proposed reducing the state's prison population. And a labor union representing prison guards is, as Commonwealth phrases it, “fear-mongering” over a proposal to—get this—simply speed the release of people already approved to be released on parole.
“The only way it can be done is they’re going to have to cut people loose that shouldn’t be cut loose,” Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association's Roy Pinto told the Patriot-News.
Commonwealth unleashed a deserved―though perhaps, as I will explore below, exaggerated―barrage of criticism: “While bad policies may have led to the explosion in state prison populations,” wrote Commonwealth's Katrina Currie, “it may be the unions that pose the biggest challenge in getting the inmate numbers down.”
The criticism was echoed one week later by the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune: “Corbett's plan to control escalating state prison costs through better efficiencies in the state Department of Corrections has met with predictable fear-mongering from the head of the prison guards' union.... Leave it to the union mentality to advance a straw-man argument against commonsense solutions.”
State Representative Babette Josephs is refusing to schedule a debate with Brian Sims, the openly gay candidate challenging her in the 182nd District Democratic primary. Sims' campaign is circulating a YouTube video that shows Josephs appearing to decline Gayborhood powerhouse Liberty City LGBT Democratic Club's request for a debate. She referred the request to her campaign manager.
"Rep. Josephs' statements and actions speak for themselves," Sims Campaign Manager Matt Goldfine tells City Paper. "She refuses Liberty City's request for a debate yet touts her support for the LGBT community."
Sims, who worked as Josephs' campaign treasurer in 2010, would be Pennsylvania's first openly gay legislator if elected. Josephs, however, is one of Harrisburg's most outspoken progressives and advocates for gay rights. She has introduced legislation giving domestic partners the same inheritance tax breaks that spouses get, and she told CP that she plans to go to tomorrow's discussion of the "Marriage Protection" amendment with speeches of opposition and proposed amendments to the restrictive language.
Fareeda Mabry, a 185th-district challenger to Rep. Maria Donatucci, won't be on April's primary ballot because her attorney stipulated to the court that she hadn't gathered enough signatures. Now, she's issued a rambling, somewhat confusing statement on the matter — one that slips occasionally from third to first person and accuses Donatucci's counsel and her own of conspiring to kick her off the ballot. "[Attorney] Mr. [Mu'Mim] Islam and the company he works for [Universal Companies] is friends of the incumbent and it would benefit them a great deal to get me off the ballot," the press release reads, arguing that Mabry did collect enough signatures, but never got the chance to prove it in court.
Why Mabry sought the pro bono assistance of Islam, even if he was a "friend and colleague," isn't all that clear. In any case, the full press release follows.
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CANDIDATE RAILROADED OFF THE APRIL 2012 DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY BALLOT BY HER ATTORNEY
Fareeda Mabry, Candidate for the 185th Legislative District
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -March 12, 2012—Candidate for the 185th Legislative District Fareeda Mabry was railroaded off the Democratic Primary Ballot by her own attorney after being served with a challenge of her petitions on February 24, 2012. The incumbent objected to the validity and the amount of signatures needed to remain on the 2012 Democratic Primary Ballot.
While Pennsylvania's own Rick Santorum is promising to "nullify" those gay marriages already recognized by states if elected President, the Commonwealth's General Assembly is doing its part for the anti-gay marriage agenda. Rep. Daryl Metcalfe's HB1434, a "Marriage Protection" amendment, specifies that no other legal union, besides marriage between a man and a woman, "shall be valid or recognized." The amendment will go to the House's State Government Committee — of which Metcalfe is chairman — for a vote tomorrow morning. Or will it?
Rep. Babette Josephs, a Philly Democrat and the minority chair of the committee, says she's heard rumors that HB1434 might be pulled after all. (We put in a call to Metcalfe, who officially makes that decision. We'll update if we hear back.)
On the one hand, there is the theory that centrist Democrats would feel pressure to support the proposal in a presidential election year. EqualityPA's Ted Martin suggests the amendment is moving forward now "for cynical reasons. People know this kind of stuff incites a certain base of people. But I think there are people who are really true believers, who see Pennsylvania slowly being surrounded by states with marriage equality" and are alarmed.
Josephs wonders, though, if that momentum is dwindling.
Teachers and/or administrators have, it appears, engineered far more widespread cheating on standardized tests at Philadelphia schools than has previously been reported, according to a lengthy article in the Sunday Inquirer.
Citywide, 53 city schools—one in five—is under investigation. Twenty-five of the city's top-tier Vanguard Schools—an astonishing 44 percent—are suspected of cheating.
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