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Budget Fuss
CP received a call today from a member of Fire Engine Company 38, who said that his company had been informed late last Friday that they were to be disbanded and sent to other stations.
"That's another station closed down, and nobody knows about it," the firefighter said.
Mayor Nutter recently announced a budget rebalancing that included cuts to the Police and Fire departments' overtime costs. This is the first we've heard of any companies actually closing.The last time engine companies were closed was during the 2008-2009 budget crunch, when Mayor Nutter authorized the deactivation of 5 engine and 7 ladder companies.
And just to put things in a bit of context: the administration and the firefighters' union have been going at it and pointing fingers at each other for years now.
Company 38 is based in Tacony, but the construction of a highway off ramp caused the company's building to be closed; About a year ago, Engine 38 firemen moved into the facilities already occupied by Engine 33 Company, at Richmond & Kirkbride streets.
Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers confirmed today that Engine 38 will now be "temporarily out of service," but emphasized that the city is building a new facility, in Tacony, which will house Engine 38 Company when it's completed â in somewhere between 18 and 24 months, he thinks.
Mayor Spokesman Doug Oliver added in an email that the new station would include a "community room," and that "This is good news in light of budget challenges."
"Poor Tacony," was the first response I got from IAFF Local 22 President Billy Galt, who added that many of the firefighters' runs are medical and that "the further we are away, the longer it takes fro us to get there, and the worse it is for that patient."
The firefighter who called, meanwhile, expressed another concern â smaller, maybe, but heartfelt: the dissolution of his and his colleagues' working relationship.
"When we get off duty, we all do the same thigns together â we hang out, we play horseshoes toether, our wives know each other . . .I'm sure we'll all fit in wherever they send us," he concluded, "but in firefighting, you have a personal relationship with each other.
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| Evan Lopez |
You already know that the new state budget means lots of cash for new prisons, $5.5 million in library cuts and $1.1 million in child care cuts. But what about everything else? In our new feature Budget Fuss, we'll be looking at lesser-reported casualties (and gains — all two of them) in the state budget.
In this week's A Million Stories, we explored the $308 million going toward the state's Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP), which provides grants for beneficiaries who match the state's buy-in dollar-for-dollar. Gov. Ed Rendell and supporters say RACP is a way to create jobs; critics say it's a way to buy votes and show clout, and that if you want to create jobs, there are better ways to do it than building a library named after Sen. Arlen Specter.
We told you a few of our favorite RACP projects — $2 million going to Antrim Township for, well, the state doesn't know yet; $5 million for the "redevelopment of an abandoned historic former schoolhouse" in Luzerne County; $3 million going to a rec center at King's College, a private Catholic school with 2,200 students — but what about all the rest?
Here's every last RACP project in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties, just in case your wonky self wanted to know (and FYI, if you want to see all RACP projects in the entire state, go here, to section 6).
For Philly:
$20 million: Acquisition, infrastructure, construction and other related costs for the American Revolution Center
$5 million: Construction, infrastructure and other related costs for mixed-use development on Gray's Ferry Corridor
$10 million: Construction of a Comprehensive Applied Research/Educational facility at Drexel University, including related costs
$15 million: Acquisition, infrastructure, construction and other related costs for redevelopment of the Tasty Baking Co. facility at Fox and Roberts Streets, including adjacent areas
$5 million: Acquisition, infrastructure, construction and other related costs for Norris Square Civic Association's mixed-use complex
$1 million: Infrastructure, construction and other related costs for an inpatient specialty hospital at the Wills Eye Institute
$7.5 million: Acquisition, infrastructure, construction and other related costs for a facility at the Philadelphia Navy Yard for commercial, industrial or multipurpose use
$5 million: Acquisition, infrastructure, construction and other related costs for development by ASPIRA, Inc., of Philadelphia at the Cardinal Dougherty High School
$5 million: Infrastructure, construction, renovation and other related costs for the Independence Visitor Center
$10 million: Construction, demolition, land acquisition, infrastructure, redevelopment and other related costs for Philadelphia University, including the Arlen Specter Library
$750,000: Land acquisition, site preparation, renovation, demolition, construction, infrastructure and other related costs for campus expansion and facility improvements at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
$10 million: Construction and other related costs for mixed-use retail and hotel project at Fourth and Race Streets
$3 million: Construction, infrastructure, redevelopment and other related costs for a new Community Legal Services building
For Bucks County:
$340,000: Rehabilitate track and install unloading equipment at Junell Corporaiton/Adv. Lube
$5 million: Construction, renovations and infrastructure improvements in the Bucks County Enterprise Zone
$15 million: Construction, infrastructure and other related costs at the Keystone Industrial Port Complex
For Delaware County:
$10 million: Rehabilitation and enhancement of the Union Square Neighborhood Revitalization District, including blight removal, streetscape remediation and new construction
$5 million: Acquisition, construction, infrastructure and other related costs for the retail development of a 35-acre site in Upper Darby
For Montgomery County:
$1.5 million: Construction, renovations and infrastructure improvements for an industrial facility
$7.5 million: Acquisition, construction and other related costs for a mixed-use commercial/retail development within the boundary of Fornance, Wood and Locust streets
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You already know that the new state budget means lots of cash for new prisons, $5.5 million in library cuts and $1.1 million in child care cuts. But what about everything else? In our new feature Budget Fuss, we'll be looking at lesser-reported casualties (and gains all two of them) in the state budget.
In this week's A Million Stories, I wrote about how the state budget eliminates much funding for free HIV tests, according to ACT UP Philadelphia, an HIV/AIDS activist group:
The new budget has slashed HIV prevention money statewide by $300,000 and that's on top of $1.7 million in cuts last year. ACT UP predicts this will lead to nearly 8,000 fewer Pennsylvanians receiving HIV tests annually. Hardest-hit will be the smaller organizations geared toward minorities and the homeless. Unless outside grants come in, these groups say, they'll have to eliminate their free HIV testing programs altogether.
Without free testing, activists fear that many Philadelphians won't know they have HIV until it's too late. "We're very successful in getting first-time testers. Without that money, a lot of people are going to fall through the cracks," says Ron Sy, executive director of AIDS Services in Asian Communities. "I'm terrified."
In order to save space, the actual organizations in Philadelphia that will be hit hardest didn't make it in the paper. But it's important to say which they are, I think: Positive Effect Outreach Ministry, AIDS Services in Asian Communities (ASIAC), Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Initiative (GALAEI) and Maternity Care Coalition, all smaller-sized groups. The reason they'll have to eliminate their HIV testing programs, they say, is because they have to redirect the money they've got to more pressing issues, like caring for people who've already tested HIV positive.
The four groups above say that, since they've been expecting the cuts, they've tried to apply for outside grants accordingly, but have yet to find out if most of them will come through.
Maternity Care Coalition also says that it may have to eliminate one of their six Philly MOMMobiles, traveling groups of advocates that provide HIV education, among other things.
Kim Phillips, of Positive Effect Outreach Ministry, says that getting rid of HIV testing will end work that's been years in the making.
"We target the homeless community, and do a lot of work in shelters building trust," she says. "There's an 'I'd rather not know, AIDS is a death sentence' attitude, so we have to educate. We're already down to the bare bones, and these cuts might crush us. I can't even wrap my head around the fact that we won't be able to get people tested."
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| Neal Santos |
| Eyevette Wilson is a crisis intervention counselor at Women Against Abuse. |
You already know that the new state budget means lots of cash for new prisons, $5.5 million in library cuts and $1.1 million in child care cuts. But what about everything else? In our new feature Budget Fuss, we'll be looking at lesser-reported casualties (and gains all two of them) in the state budget.
At first, it appears as though domestic violence funding and related services have only been cut here and there, in small amounts: From the 2009/10 to 2010/11 fiscal year, the state's domestic violence funding dropped from $12,487,000 to $12,385,000 ($102,000 cut); rape crisis funding dropped from$7,146,000 to $7,087,000 ($59,000 cut); and legal services funding dropped from $3,064,000 to $3,039,000 ($25,000 cut).
But then you look at the line item for the Human Services Development Fund (HSDF), which funds much of Women Against Abuse Legal Center's budget. Women Against Abuse (WAA) is a Philly nonprofit that provides services to domestic violence victims, including a legal center that gives victims court advocates for educational and emotional guidance. The state money for HSDF dropped from $29,346,000 to $23,478,000 that's a $5.9 million cut.
(It's worth noting that the city usually gets $6 million each year from HSDF; these funds are then directed to various city departments, which are then re-directed to some nonprofits like WAA. We'll be looking into how the HSDF cuts affect other city departments and nonprofits in the upcoming weeks.)
"We are very concerned about how the cuts to HSDF will affect our Legal Center," says Katie Young-Wildes, WAA's associate director of development. "The HSDF funds $250,000 for the Women Against Abuse Legal Center, which helps thousands of women, men and children break free from abuse each year."
With the Legal Center's total budget at $1.1 million, HSDF money accounts for nearly a quarter of that.
Young-Wildes says WAA is awaiting to hear from the city how much the nonprofit will now get from HSDF, in light of the cuts.
To better understand what WAA and its Legal Center does, you can read an article I wrote about the nonprofit earlier this year. It's also worth noting that, though the cuts in domestic violence funding, rape crisis and legal services didn't drop by too much this time around, they come on top of $296,268 in city budget cuts to WAA last year, and a 4.7 percent decrease in state funding five years ago.
Think there's something we should cover for Budget Fuss? E-mail holly.otterbein@citypaper.net.
[...] Budget Fuss: How does the state budget affect domestic violence funding? :: The Clog :: Blog Archive... [...]
[...] Budget Fuss: How does the state budget affect domestic violence … [...]
[...] Budget Fuss: How does the state budget affect domestic violence funding? :: The Clog :: Blog Archive... [...]
[...] Budget Fuss: How does the state budget affect domestic violence funding? :: The Clog :: Blog Archive... [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lauras_House. Lauras_House said: RT @DVintheNews: Budget Fuss: How does the state budget affect domestic violence funding? http://ow.ly/28LqM [...]
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Update: Well this is what I get for not checking my feeds before pounding the keys:
Read more about this at It's Our Money, Philly Clout, and Heard in the Hall.
According to various sources in City Hall, including Councilmen Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney, members of the beverage industry have offered Mayor Michael Nutter $10 million toward obesity programs in exchange for his letting go of a proposed tax on sweetened beverages.
In addition, DiCicco said an offer was brewing from members of the soda industry to provide $10 million over two years to the city for health and wellness programs. He said those funds -- which would be provided if the proposed soda tax goes away -- could also help bridge the gap.
According to the mayor's office, it's not going to work. In an email about half an hour ago, spokesman Doug Oliver told CP:
The City would not accept an offer of $10m from the beverage association. It would not provide the City with the revenue it needs over the life of the five-year plan.
What does all of this mean?
On the one hand, there's the fiscal side of things: the mayor's proposed tax of 2 cents per ounce is supposed to raise about $77 million a year, $20 million of which would go to anti-obesity efforts; although they expect only about half of that, $38.6 million, in the first year. By those calculations, the mayor's right. A one-time $10 million gift, especially if it goes entirely to anti-obesity programs, doesn't balance our budget.
BUT
Finance Director Rob Dubow told Councilman Bill Green today that none of those proceeds would go toward anti-obesity programs this year.
And sources in City Hall say the administration has been bargaining around not two cents per ounce, but three-quarters of a cent, maybe even as low as half a cent per ounce meaning the revenue could be as low as $14M or less for the first year and somewhere around 28.8 million in following years, by my calculation. With that revenue cut in half, how much, if any, will actually go to fight obesity?
Which makes this situation a little complicated: Mayor Nutter's refusal to take the $10 million could be seen as principled, yet without it or, rather, if he has to compromise his tax too much to get it passed it's not clear whether there will be any new anti-obesity funding at all.
Both the soda industry and Mayor Nutter appear to be fighting a symbolic battle, at least to some extent.
The industry likely opposes his tax and is willing to pay him $10M to kill it not so much because of what it'll do to them here, but because Mayor Nutter may be paving the way for similar taxes elsewhere (perhaps statewide taxes; perhaps a federal tax).
And it's precisely because he's paving the way, say many sources in Council, that Mayor Nutter is fighting so hard to keep this tax alive. He's staked no little reputation on being one of the first mayors to pull off such a tax.
In a marathon session, City Council moved ahead on a 9.9 percent property tax hike, a tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars, and withheld a bill that would impose the mayor's baby: the sweetened beverage tax.
It seemed earlier in the day like that tax was going to pass but Council leadership was unable, apparently, to muster the nine votes needed. The administration, however, hasn't given up on the soda tax by a long shot.
Councilman Frank DiCicco, who proposed the first property tax hike as an alternative to a flat $300 trash fee, voted "no" on the 9.9 percent hike today, favoring a 12.1 percent property tax hike that would have made up most of the difference.
Council also approved a spending bill with about $17 million in cuts, disappointing Councilman Bill Green, who has proposed more than $40 in cuts himself, mostly by not filling unfilled positions.
Right now, Council will have to find about $18 million more in revenue or in cuts.
These bills have just passed first reading they'll need to pass again next week to become law.
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More budget coverage on Twitter.
This morning, the regular meeting of City Council was suspended in order to hear speakers on various revenue proposals being floated by Council and the administration, including a property tax hike between 9.9 percent and 12 percent, a sugar-sweetened beverage tax (between, apparently, half a cent and two cents), and a tax on smokeless tobacco products and cigars.
The plan seems to be this:
After this hearing, Council leadership will meet with the administration and try to hammer out a deal. Council needs nine votes to pass it, but the final votes on this stuff aren't usually quite that close: leadership would like to get 11.
Assuming it happens, Council will reconvene its regular meeting, amend the bills that constitute the mayor's initial budget proposal, and allow the revised budget a first reading and initial vote which will let them vote it in finally next week.
So what's the deal going to be? Not totally clear yet. A new proposal of a 12 percent increase to the property tax seems to be gaining some traction. It would close most of the current budget gap and likely obviate the need for other taxes. Councilman Frank DiCicco, about an hour ago, seemed to voice support for it, saying:
"We're going to take a political hit no matter what we do ... I say take the 12.10 [property tax hike] and not worry about the other taxes because we can't get the nine votes anyway."
However, it seems to be up in the air still whether Mayor Nutter is willing to drop his sugary beverage tax or not he's staked some political capital on it, and has received national attention for the proposal.
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An occasional, inconsistent, and improbable series on this year's budget.
The Coalition for Essential Services a coalition of labor, service, and community groups dedicated to getting a "fair budget" passed by Council meaning, in their case, preserving city services and jobs rallied outside City Hall this morning to get Council's attention focused on what they consider the fairest way to balance the city's budget: raising (or "rolling back" to mid-nineties levels) the "gross receipts" portion of the business privilege tax.
This comes as Mayor Nutter's proposed trash fee appears all but dead, and the sugary beverages tax isn't doing much better. Councilman Frank DiCicco has withdrawn his own alternative, a proposed 12% property tax hike, and Councilman Wilson Goode has introduced a two-year 9% property tax hike instead, apparently backed by democratic Council leadership, to balance the budget.
But Council is just starting to hold its neighborhood community budget hearings, and they're already being told exactly what they were told last year: "don't raise our property taxes."
Is it just me, or is it strange that we spend about half a year waiting for Council to make up its mind on given budget?
Anyway: back to the gross-receipts thing.
The idea is this: the gross receipts tax is a tax on net sales rather than revenue/income.
Because large companies can easily hide or move their income, the reasoning goes, the gross receipts tax is the only way to tax the operations of major, national retailers in the area.
One of the strongest arguments against raising this tax is that, because it taxes sales regardless of income, it can tax a business that isn't turning a profit. To answer this challenge, the Coalition is proposing that all businesses with receipts under $500,000 be exempted.
It's an interesting idea, and the exemption is clever - I don't think anyone wants to hurt small businesses right now, but getting a better cut from Coca Cola, etc. it could gain steam.
Council members Bill Green and Maria Quinones-Sanchez have so far been the most interested in potentially revising the gross receipts tax.
Anybody out there want to weigh in on this one? Got a better idea to balance the budget? (And if you're going to say, "cut city jobs," that's fine, but no getting off easy: which department anyone want to take up the line-item challenge?).
Thanks Isaiah! 40% of big businesses taxed by the GRT (over $500,000 in Receipts and therefore not exempted under our plan) aren't even based in Philadelphia. They rely on our city services to create markets and access for their products. They aren't going to stop selling their products in our city, and they don't provide any jobs for Philadelphia, so taxing them is win-win for us. Zachary H Coalition for Essential Services PhillyCES.org
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by philly news now. philly news now said: Budget fuss: Coalition urges use of gross receipts tax to balance budget: An occasional, inconsistent, and impr... http://bit.ly/cW0tkT [...]
How about thinking outside the box and limiting the proposed "gross receipts" tax to one full business week of the year.
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| Does he dream of BRT data sheep? |
A new and likely-doomed blog series, in which I fuss about the city budget. Oh yeah.
What, exactly does Budget Director Stephen Agostini do? The budget, of course as evidenced by the hours and hours he spends sitting in on Council's budget hearings, ever-ready with reams of numbers and answers to obscure fiscal questions.
But what else does he do, eh?
The answer, apparently, is: a lot.
A recent visit to Mr. Agostini's office confirms that the man is not only in charge of the budget, but also of overseeing stimulus spending and, the great glorious crown of municipal drudgery: fixing the lousy Board of Revision of Taxes data.
Quietly, and even amid the budget hearings, Agostini is leading a small group of people who meet every week, for "about 4 or 5 hours" to discuss the latest in efforts to repair what appears to be a city-wide data crisis.
According to Agostini, the problem has grown far beyond the BRT, since various city departments among them Water Revenue, Streets, Revenue, Records, L&I, and the Water Department have been relying on (bad) BRT figures, thereby creating even more sets of useless data. (As one source deep in the bureaucracy put it, "It's so bad.")
He estimates it'll take a year to 18 months to get it all fixed.
Why has such a task fallen on a man ostensibly busy with the budget?
"Why this fell to me is because I started working on it a year ago," he told me, shrugging.
You have an answer for everything. Go Citypaper go.
Dear Kenneth, Mr. Agostini was given the opportunity to provide his own photo for this blog post, and advised that I'd have to scour the internet otherwise. When Mr. Agostini replied very politely, I might add - that I should go ahead and dig one up, I Google-Imaged the man and found this photo, which is, after all, his public Facebook profile. All that being said, I think it's a rather charming shot, don't you? Isaiah
you used his facebook photo?
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A new and likely-doomed blog series, in which I fuss about the city budget. Oh yeah.
"The Government," Mayor Nutter told me, very firmly, "is not growing."
Period. That's it. Read. My. Lips.
Well, he didn't say that, but he kind of implied it. I stammered a bit and waved a piece of paper entitled "City Manager's Quarterly Report" at him, but the mayor wouldn't budge. "The government is not growing," he said, and patted me good-naturedly on the back, as if to say, "But nice try."
It's a claim he's made several times, most notably in a recent letter to the Inquirer:
Several opinion pieces may lead readers to believe the city has relied only on revenue measures to solve the multibillion-dollar deficits it has faced since the world economic collapse. That is false. Excluding pensions and debt service, the city's costs this year will be about $160 million lower than in fiscal 2008. A big part of that reduction has been in personnel costs. Since December 2008, the city's general-fund workforce has shrunk by about 800, and when part-time and temporary positions are added, there are 1,250 fewer employees now than at the end of 2008. And for the first half of this fiscal year, overtime was down by a third from where it was last year.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the government, this man is saying, is not growing.
But this handy chart I made says differently:
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| By Isaiah Thompson, Data: City of Philadelphia |
Here's what the chart tells us:
- While it's true that Nutter cut jobs way down from December 2008, that date represented a high-water mark; in other words, Nutter, at the time, was already presiding over the highest level of staffing in four years.
- Starting this year, we can expect to see the city's staff levels go back up, eventually back to where they were in 2005 which was a full three years before the great financial collapse.
- Between 2008 and 2009, the mayor did eliminate actual positions but he also eliminated plenty of vacant positions.
- The number of actual positions, while shrinking, has stayed in more or less the same relative in proportion to the number of budgeted positions.
Look: I'm not some small-government nut. Putting on my columnist's hat for a minute, I don't really care all that much if we do or don't add 100 jobs. It's a small part of the overall budget, and a relatively small part of the overall tax burden. But in a budget proposal which makes virtually no cuts on the one hand, and raises taxes on the other, it's worth asking whether the administration is making its sacrifices this year, too.
Nutter's response, when I first tried to run these numbers by him, was "Talk to Dubow" referring to Rob Dubow, Director of Finance.
Dubow, initially, told me that the city is not adding staff. Until he admitted that, well, yes, it is adding a few positions but not that many, and, he said, the city expects some of these staff investments (e.g technologyth) to result in "efficiencies," which they have not yet budgeted for.
Which is all well and good, but not not quite what the mayor said, when he said, "The Government is not growing."
I cannot believe the mayor did not take your little chart as gospel and cancel his entire schedule to review it with you. What was he thinking?
I think I'm starting to look like the better choice in that election every day....
[...] And I'll say this: As a reporter, I've found the mayor himself and his staff, particularly the mayor's press office, with which I interact fairly often, to be remarkably accessible and down-to-earth even when my writing is, as is often the case, critical. [...]
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