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Archive: April, 2012
Council President Darrell Clarke lives on a quiet street in a probably gerrymandered corner of his district, but he says that when his handful of near neighbors have a problem, they don't hesitate to pound on his door. So lately, he's been hearing about surprise water bills, like one that skyrocketed from an estimated $80 monthly bill to an actual reading of $1,300. The city has been going around replacing meter batteries around the city, which is what's touching off some of the issues. Clarke asked Philly Deputy Revenue Commissioner Michelle Bethel about the problem today at Council's budget hearing. Clarke said even if that one reading was a mistake, a bigger policy issue remains. Bethel's response:"If a customer sees an estimated reading [denoted as an 'E' on the bill], they should contact us."
"Why is it the customer's responsibility?" Clarke asked, about three different ways. There were assertions that some of us purposefully avoid allowing meter repairs, and promises to be proactive, but no real answer. Clarke pledged to have a follow-up meeting with the Revenue Department on the topic. In the meantime, residents can be charged penalties and interest in what many feel are unfair surprises.
This weekend, Occupy Philly tried to bring back the good old days with a symbolic encampment on Independence Mall, but a longer term strategy might lie on the sidewalks outside banks like Wells Fargo. "We started 'banksleeping' Friday night," outside the Wells Fargo building on Chestnut Street. "Some of us had been up in New York doing it for a few weeks now," said Occupy participant Brandi Wilson, 23, who was manning the information tent at Independence Mall today, despite a verbal request to remove it. She said the Occupiers are waiting for a written citation and are filing an injunction to keep the info tent going as a symbol of free speech. (They were also attempting to float a tent filled with helium balloons, so it would not technically be pitched on the ground and might thereby be allowed to remain.)
Even if the last handful of Occupiers do get kicked off of Independence Mall, Wilson hopes the "banksleep" could be a tenable longterm alternative, meant to highlight the plight of those who have been foreclosed by theoretically bringing them to the bank's front door. She says a Wells Fargo guard came outside to warn them he would call the police, but that by morning, no police had arrived.
Accusations are springing up online that the abandoned Kensington warehouse that caught fire yesterday, killing two firefighters, had been repeatedly brought to the city's attention before the fire. At 4:00 PM today, city officials will hold a press conference to address the fire and, presumably, questions around the warehouse.
In a thread on the online forum fishtown.us, several neighbors and nearby residents describe having "blasted" the city's 311 service (which refers complaints to city agencies, like Licensing and Inspections) with complaints about the warehouse, including missing and damaged windows, an insecure gate, and an entrance that was "unsecured and open to anyone."
(Updated: I hadn't realized this, but Ryan Briggs, writing for the blog hiddencityphila.org, posted a decription of the problem just last week in an article titled, "Passing the buck." )
One user, Christopher Sawyer, has posted a public Google Doc with information about the apparent owners of the building, along with a copy of the 311 complaint and a message he received back from 311, saying the complaint had already been made:
This was already reported to Licenses and Inspections. L & I will cite the owner for the violations. If not complied at last inspection, property will be referred to court for a judgment demanding the owner to resolve the problems. In a rare case where the owner has been removed from the property by city agencies, coordinated efforts will be made to correct the outstanding violations.
The warehouse, at 1817 E. York, is owned by York Street Property Development, LLC — a company listed by the Department of State as being based in Langhorne, Pa. (No principals' names are listed). According to data from the city's Revenue department, the owners owe nearly $60,000 in property taxes on that property.
Another company, 728 Market Street, LP — based at the same address as the York Street owner — owns 726-728 Market Street, a dilapidated and boarded up apartment complex in Center City. The owners are more than $278,000 behind on property taxes for that building.
City Paper did email L&I but was told that that department will address questions about the warehouse at today's 4PM press conference.
Guess things are getting ugly in the race for the 186th District seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Candidate Damon K. Roberts reports "this morning, Thursday, a man attempted to break in to the campaign office. The same female campaign worker was alone in the office when this happened and immediately contacted the Philadelphia Police, who responded quickly and arrested the man on the spot. The two incidents seem to be unrelated." Full press release follows.
On the eve of the six-month anniversary of Occupy Philly, a group of occupiers, including some who were arrested in a protest of Wells Fargo last fall, staged a "Seussical" spectacular outside that bank this afternoon.
The "play," which involved a 6-foot stagecoach, revolved around a Wells Fargo banker foreclosing on homeowners and stealing money from Philly schools.
The plot echoes the findings of a 2010 Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission lawsuit alleging that Wells Fargo had practiced discriminatory lending policies in Philly's African-American neighborhoods, leading to disproportionate foreclosures there.
It also invokes the massive financial fallout of agreements made between the Philadelphia School District (and other school districts around Pa.) and large financial institutions, including Wells Fargo, that have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the schools. Essentially, these school districts entered into long-term investment agreements that depended on interests rates remaining significantly higher than they've since plummeted.
Philadelphia's schools, according to a report by the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, have lost some $331 million so far and stand to lose another $240 million from those deals.
You can read that report (and a much better explanation) here.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has some pretty sweet loopholes it seems — that is, from the perspective of those who are looking for creative new ways to dispose of potentially toxic materials. One of those loopholes: research and development permits, which in one case, allowed a company called Hazelton Creek Properties LLC to dump two million tons of untested and potentially dangerous construction and demolition waste into an abandoned mine.
Save Us From Future Environmental Risks (SUFFER), a Hazleton, Pa.-based advocacy group, filed suit, and they've just reached a settlement with the DEP and another one with the company. The settlement should help stem the abuse of the R&D permits. Jennifer Clarke, executive director of the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, explains that Hazleton Creek Properties had theorized that dumping a mix of coal ash, demolition waste and dredged river silt would create a hard concrete that would then safely fill up the mine shaft; the DEP would consider that a "beneficial" use, since it seals up a gaping hole in the ground. "We said, 'Well that's great, but we have to wait until 2.2 million tons are delivered and then see?' Then it's really too late." After all, once the stuff is dumped in, it's almost impossible to remove.
[-4] Around 25,000 Philadelphia children were removed from Medicaid at the end of 2011 as part of a statewide effort to eliminate patients with outdated paperwork. “If these children want healthcare they should be willing to fight for it,” says Gov. Corbett. “May the odds be ever in your favor, little girl with brittle bones.”
[-1] The Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com are sold for the fourth time in six years, this time for $55 million, a little better than one tenth of what it sold for in 2006. You may recognize the new owners from Storage Wars.
[+1] “We do not want to run the newspapers,” says one of the new owners of Philadelphia Media Network, Lewis Katz. “We want to merely own them for the benefit of our community.” Adding: “Please buy my new book on management: Leading With Faint Praise and Barely Detectable Enthusiasm, available now at, eh, wherever.”
[0] March was the most profitable month to date for Pennsylvania slot machines. Well shit. I guess that’s why we’re all so upbeat and bubby around here.
[-2] The latest polls have Santorum ahead of Romney in the Pennsylvania primary later this month. “I’m not used to the lead,” says Santorum. “I prefer to come from behind, you know? Slip through the cracks. Really mix shit up.”
[0] Members of local motorcycle clubs The Pagans and Tribe are told they can proceed with their lawsuit defending their right to wear their “colors” while riding in New Jersey. “Ok, fine,” says judge. “You guys wanna wear blues and blacks at the same time, it’s your fashion nightmare. But please: What’s with the apostrophe? It says ‘Pagan’s Motorcycle Club’ on the backs of your smart little sleeveless denim blazers. Now, unless there is only one Pagan, then — ow ow ow.”
[+1] NJ Gov. Chris Christie fires off several exuberant tweets from a Springsteen concert in Philly. “Just crushed like 7 ppl while crowdsurfing--LOLZ!”
[0] Gov. Corbett makes moves toward privatizing the Pennsylvania Lottery. He comes home to find an anonymous threat gnawed into his front door: “Do not fuck with me, dude. Do not. Or I swear to the gods I will burrow into your chest cavity and keep on scratching.”
This week’s total: 2 | Last week’s total: 2
Hall Monitor is not exactly a coding genius; but, recognizing the increasing role of "Computer Assisted Reporting" these days, we offer readers of this blog post the following program, to be entered into your favorite BASIC processor (non-80s-computer-nerds avert your eyes):
10 Print "The Philly311 App is coming!"
20 Goto 10
As the Daily News reports, the city administration told City Council yesterday that a 311 smartphone app is on its way — great news but not, we'd point out, very different news than we heard two years ago, when the administration said the same.
Technically Philly has been reporting on the delay for years. In July — July, 2010, that is — TP reported on what was then a 2-month delay:
Last week, while the City of Philadelphia was busy celebrating the country’s 234th birthday, another anniversary passed by with little fanfare. July 5 marked three months since the city announced it was developing its own 311 iPhone application to allow citizens to access city data on the go. It also marked the day the application was two months late.In an April 5 announcement, Division of Technology chief Allan Frank said the application would be available in May, yet there’s still no sign of it on thecity’s 311 site or in the App Store.
To be fair, Mr. Allan Frank no longed heads the Division of Technology. He left, the division was renamed, and two years later, it's Chief Innovation Officer Edel Ebeid, of the Office of Information Technology, who's now promising to deliver the mythical 311 app.
When? Goto 10.
Standard & Poor's boosted Philly's credit rating from BBB with a flat outlook to BBB+ with a positive outlook today. Should you care?
Councilman Curtis Jones was pretty ecstatic at today's budget hearing. And City Treasurer Nancy Winkler said that "plus" makes a difference: having even one low credit rating is pretty bad for city finances. Philly has an A2 rating from Moody's and an A- from Fitch, the other two major rating agencies. A lower rating indicates higher risk.
"Investors typically want to receive an interest rate on the bonds they own commensurate with the lowest rating that’s out there. So for us the gap between the Moody's A2 and the BBB flat was costly to us.... It should be [worth] millions of dollars to the city and all of its borrowers if we could get into the A category," she said. She said that, while credit ratings used to be not such a big deal, "since the credit crisis investors are drawing very major distinctions [between ratings] and demanding much higher rates."
Also interesting: the amount of selling and schmoozing that apparently went into getting that higher rating, including tours of the Navy Yard, a sales pitch from Comcast execs, and a PowerPoint from Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger that was so big it would have to be passed on to Council via flash drive.
Now the bad news: the only big city that has a worse credit rating than Philly is Detroit, though some smaller cities fare worse.
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Last week, a coalition of community groups, housing advocates, and would-be urban farmers met to state their case for access to vacant land to 1st District Councilman Mark Squilla.
The event was hosted by the "Campaign to take back Vacant Land," a coalition being led by the Women's Community Revitalization Project, a developer of low-income and affordable housing, and which has teamed up with various groups in and around eastern North Philly to lobby for the creation of a citywide "land bank," that would be run by an independent board.
The group (you can usually tell them by their yellow t-shirts) has been lobbying, hounding, and nudging for the creation of such a land bank for over a year. Early this year, 7th District Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez co-introduced a bill that would create such a land bank.
They also asked Councilman Squilla to support amendments they've proposed to the Sanchez bill that would impose various requirements, including mandatory ratios of land sold for private commercial use versus nonprofit and community benefit uses and other specifics that would empower community groups and nonprofits (like, for example, the group fighting for this amendment).
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