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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.
Northeast Corner of Spruce Street and 38th Parallel Place.
This pile of dirt and grass is NOT part of the Korean War Memorial Park to the north and east. This is a straight-up empty lot that's managed to stay hidden due to all the open space around it, disguised as part of the surrounding park and plaza. Empty for over 50 years, this shitty patch of fuck has witnessed the entire history of our great city.
When William Penn first arrived to primordial Philadelphia in 1682, legend has it that he entered at "the Dock," a small bay at the mouth of Dock Creek (now Dock Street). The site of this empty lot, according to some accounts, would have been located somewhere along the southern edge of the Dock, just to the east of the mouth of Little Dock Creek, a small tributary of the Dock that ran southwest. That means William Penn, if the old accounts/conjectural musings are true, passed this location on a boat when he first arrived.
Follow on twitter @rw_briggs … if you want your own luxurious spending questioned.
Chaka "Chip" Fattah, Jr. started following me on Twitter after I tweeted a link to an Inquirer article about a questionably ethical "legal defense fund" former Governor Ed Rendell and former Mayor Wilson Goode launched in his honor. While I posted that link mostly because I was concerned, like other observers, with the fund being used as a roundabout way to curry favor with Fattah Jr.'s politically influential Congressman father, I also thought it was odd that someone in his position even had a need for charitable support.
There is no question that Fattah is (or, at least, was) well-off financially. As noted in that article, Fattah lives in the Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, is the son of powerful Rep. Chaka Fattah and newscaster Renee Chenault-Fattah and claimed a past-year salary of "$300,000." In short, he would seem like an individual that would be more than capable of handling even his admittedly costly legal fees, particularly with the support of his high powered family.
Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir
In recent months suburban and typically white victims of mass shootings in Colorado, Connecticut and Arizona have galvanized the United States to think critically about gun violence, mental health, and gun control. As they should have.
But Sunday's broad-daylight shooting of a largely-black New Orleans second line parade, which left 19 people injured, including three critically, merited just a six-paragraph AP story tucked into the bottom corner of A11 in The New York Times. The Mother's Day bloodshed evidences a jarring disjuncture in how violence is treated in the media: Americans killed by Muslims or in white suburbia merit non-stop coverage while the victims of everyday bloodletting on the streets of New Orleans, Philadelphia and Chicago are typically rendered a footnote.
Follow on twitter @rw_briggs
A new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, released today, offered some insights into the impact of the city's massive overhaul of the city's property tax assessments, better known as the Actual Value Initiative (AVI). The main thrust of the study confirms previous claims that the current iteration of AVI will shift roughly seven percent of the city's total taxable value from commercial to residential properties, but offers several other important findings.
Some businesses may have earned a break
We already knew that Philly politicians were receiving generous gifts from lobbyists, but officials' self-filed Statements of Financial Interest — due on May 1 — offer a look at this largess through a rather interesting filter. After all, the reports range from a multiple-page spreadsheet from Councilman At-Large Bill Green, who received thousands of dollars' worth of tickets and travel accommodations, to a handwritten denial of having received any gifts at all by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell. This year is the first time we can actually compare the officials' self-disclosures with lobbyist reports, which lobbyists were required to submit to the city starting in 2012. There appear to be some discrepancies.
The Statements of Financial Interest are not posted online — to the outrage of good-government group Committee of Seventy and others — but can be inspected for free at the city Department of Records (where CP learned that nonprofits also may obtain free copies. Which they may presumably post publicly. Ahem, AxisPhilly.) In addition to gifts, they also include other interesting tidbits like alternate sources of income: for example, Councilwoman Marian Tasco lists Revel Casino as one of hers.
Aside from the personal quirks to be found among the gifts described in the reports (Coldplay tickets? Really, Councilman Green?) and the utter dominance of PECO/Exelon Corp. as a foremost gift-giver for Philly's elected officials, the statements raise a lot of questions. Why, for example, did City Commissioner Stephanie Singer — who ran a reform campaign — fail to file a statement as of 2 p.m. yesterday? (She tells CP she will have it in by today, or Monday at the latest, and "thanks for the reminder.") Why does Blackwell list no gifts whatsoever, when PECO claims to have given her $525 worth of tickets to the Mann Music Center in July? And why does PECO claim it gave Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez $300 worth of Phillies tickets, when Sanchez makes no mention of them in her disclosure form?
As reported by PlanPhilly, the Old City Civic Association, one of Philadelphia's oldest and highest profile civic groups disbanded this week, after its board voted on Monday to dissolve the organization entirely.
The drastic move was hardly an unheralded one, as OCCA's board had also voted two weeks ago to dissolve its liquor control and zoning committees, effectively neutering the organization's enforcement capabilities. That decision followed years of acrimonious relationships with developers and certain business operators, one of whom, Waterfront Renaissance Associates, has been largely credited with suing the zoning committees out of existance. OCCA members reported that their director's and officers' insurance premiums had jumped into the thousands of dollars annually thanks to that suit, which alleged a conspiracy on the part of several civic organizations and the city to derail the Philadelphia World Trade Center project.
CP hasn't met Ed McBride, but doesn't doubt that he is an amiable guy, not to mention a savvy one. That said, it's probably not just his friendly nature that led every member of City Council to co-sponsor a resolution introduced yestarday honoring him "on the great occasion of his promotion to the position of Manager of Local Government Affairs for PECO." McBride also happens to be the guy whose name is all over PECO's generous corporate gift-giving to City Council members, in the form of Phillies tickets, Auto Show tickets, Flower Show tickets, Mann Music Center tickets, and tickets to fancy receptions at the Pennsylvania Society gathering. This, along with various lobbying efforts, appears to be what's described in the resolution as McBride's "years of dedicated service to The City Council of Philadelphia."
Several hundred public school students crowded around City Hall at lunchtime, holding signs and umbrellas, demanding an end to cuts to school staff and programming. Their march — instigated on Twitter and Facebook and, according to them, supported by their teachers and school staff — came hours after Mayor Nutter and state legislators held a press conference to announce their plan to put together an additional $60 million in funding for Philadelphia schools. That plan was to include liquor-by-the-drink tax increases and possible cigarette tax increases, both of which would require state enabling legislation. The school district is also seeking $120 million more in state funds.
Nutter said at the event that he'd discussed the matter with Council members. But not at the announcement: Anyone from City Council. As Council President Darrell Clarke put it, "There was a press conference today. I don't know what was said, because it was held at the time that we had to be in this building. Pretty much consistently every Thursday we're here."
Clarke does know one thing, though: Council needs help, from the state and the administration. "The whole notion that this Council has to do it alone? That's getting old, that's getting real stale," he said at Council. Later, he told reporters, "Enabling legislation from the state [to clear the way for liquor and cigarette tax increases] does not equate to real contributions form the state, as relates to dollars." Those ideas, he added, were short-term fixes in any case. He said that Council had asked to meet with Gov. Tom Corbett on the matter but had heard no response. (CLARIFICATION: Clarke had asked School Reform Commission Chairman Pedro Ramos to request that meeting, which Ramos said he would do. But apparently there's been no progress on this that Clarke's been made aware of.)
Tens of thousands of Philly residents still haven't applied for the homestead exemption, the tax-relief for owner occupants that's currently set at $30,000 (that is, your property tax rate is calculated after you deduct $30,000 from your homes value). Now, they may have more time to get the forms in.
The state of politics these days around the Actual Value Initiative (AVI) may seem a little hazy, given the double-digit number of proposed property-tax relief bills that have been floated in City Council. But last night, Councilman Kenyatta Johnson broke it down for South of South neighborhood residents: They're screwed — so are Councilman Mark Squilla's First District constituents, and some of the property owners in Council President Darrell Clarke's Fifth District — and it's up to the constituents to help him pressure at-large City Council members to stop "this train" before it gets out of the station.
"I'm already a 'no' vote," he said. But Council members whose districts would benefit from AVI didn't feel the same. He said he had support from Squilla and Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, but needed residents to help turn the heads of at-large City Council members, whose names and phone numbers he provided on a handy call sheet. "We're going to need nine votes to change the direction of where AVI is going right now."
"The process is flawed," Johnson told residents, adding that City Council has now "subpoenaed the city for their formula" for assessing property values. He has also been working with the Crosstown Coalition of Taxpayers, a number of civic groups that have been demanding more transparency from the administration and the Office of Property Assessment.
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