|
|
|
Philadelphia City Council members this afternoon announced a special investigative committee they'll be creating to investigate demolition practices and regulation in Philadelphia, and to develop new oversight and enforcement practices. The committee is a reaction to the collapse of a building on the 2100 block of Market Street that killed six people. It appears that the city rubber-stamped the demolition permit without any significant review or requirement for a safety plan in place.
Council members said they expected to seek an interdepartmental, intergovernmental approach, drawing on the Department of Licenses & Inspections, OSHA, the EPA, the Philadelphia Fire Department and even the Revenue Department to mandate training of demolition workers and proper safety guidelines.
Follow Ryan on twitter @rw_briggs
According to records from the Sheriff's Office, two major East Falls properties owned by tax delinquent landlord Mark E. Sherman were sent to foreclosure sale last month, including the former Delaware Valley High School site and the Sherman Mills apartment complex.
Both properties had been chronicled here for their tax delinquency and Sherman's attempts to lease out his school building in spite of outstanding tax debt.
The former DVHS site was posted with an opening bid of $133,700, while one phase of the sprawling Sherman Mills campus was listed for $437,900. Opening values at sheriff sales are usually tied to the debt owed on a particular property.
The budgets released by Democratic and Republican Pennsylvania lawmakers over the last few weeks have stark differences — for example, Senate Democrats are looking to direct $212 million more to education and $125 million more to job creation than a House Republican proposal did. But perhaps even more importantly, the Democrats included Medicaid expansion in their budget. They anticipate $154 million in revenue from the expansion.
Sen. Vincent Hughes, (D-Phila.), who is also Senate Appropriations Chairman, says some lawmakers are starting to wake up to the fact that the expansion, part of the Affordable Care Act, is not just a policy issue but a core budget issue for the coming fiscal year. "The issue of medicaid expansion, especially in the benefit it has to the larger budget, has been an issue that we have to continue to hammer, so that people can see that issue from a larger lens," he says. "The huge investment from the federal government into the state has a positive budgetary impact on a whole lot of areas, especially basic-education funding. We've had to hammer that, and what we've started to see is folks are starting to pick up on it. Republicans across Pennsylvania, state representatives and senators, are starting to see that."
Newsstands in Philly can today be set up with a permit from the Department of Licenses & Inspections. But soon that could change. Councilman Curtis Jones, on behalf of Council President Darrell Clarke, introduced a bill this morning to require all prospective newsstand owners to go through City Council first, and obtain an ordinance — aka, a law — allowing the newsstand at a given location.
About a year ago at this time, Council appropriated for itself the power to authorize bike lanes in a similar fashion, seen alternatively as a move to strengthen community input or as a straight-up power grab, fueling the juggernaut of councilmanic prerogative.
Council also has to approve each and every sidewalk cafe unless it happens to be within a special cafe district, meaning each business owner must have support from his or her respective district councilperson.
With all eyes on a tragic - and likely preventable - building collapse, Philadelphians likely missed a bit of good news. Or bad news if you happened to be one of the dozens of candidates for Traffic Court. The state passed legislation authorizing the merger of Traffic Court functions into the Municipal Court.
The House passed the bill, which would also strike three Traffic Court judges recently selected in the May primary from the November ballot, in a 114 to 81 vote. The bill will now pass to the Senate for final approval of additional amendments, and is expected to be signed by Governor Tom Corbett.
Traffic Court judges earn $91,000 annually for an office that has virtually no prerequisites for service. The lax requirements led to Traffic Court elections which routinely drew dozens of questionable candidates. This year's election featured 26 candidates for three seats, including Warren Bloom, a convicted sex offender, and Omar Sabir, a self-described "businessman" with party and labor union ties who had personally racked up numerous traffic tickets.
Philly City Council's Committee of the Whole approved a real-estate tax rate today. It's 1.34 percent, with a $30,000 homestead exemption. That's nowhere near as severe as the 1.8 percent number some feared a year ago at this time, but it's more than some City Council members are comfortable with.
Councilman Jim Kenney, who has been advocating for a 1 percent property tax rate, tried to amend the bill so that any money set aside for tax relief, such as the homestead exemption, would be used to lower the tax rate down the road if it was not used (such as if all those eligible for exemptions did not apply for them). The committee did not approve that amendment.
Several Council members voted against the rate as it was approved. One was City Councilman Mark Squilla, whose First District is the most heavily affected by new tax assessments under the Actual Value Initiative. Squilla said not to look at the 1.34 percent millage rate as a done deal. "I'm going to hope there's room for movement. We've passed a lot of things out of committee that we need by the end of the budget session to have options to vote on."
State Sen. Anthony Williams has introduced enabling legislation to let Philly impose a $2-per-pack cigarette tax and a 5 percent increase in the liquor-by-the-drink tax, both part of Mayor Nutter's plan to fill a $304 million funding shortfall for the Philly School District. Bar owners have been protesting the liquor tax hike — which would double the current tax — but a report from the progressive Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center indicates that the liquor tax may be the least burdensome of the two.
The school district lost $1,327 per student in 2012, compared to $459 per student on average statewide, after Gov. Tom Corbett oversaw a nearly $1 billion cut to basic education funding. The district has not recovered from the loss of $287 million in funding that year.
This afternoon at 4 p.m., an estimated 300 school workers, students and parents will rally at school district headquarters to protest dangerous conditions and poor food options in Philly public schools. The demonstration, organized by Unite Here, coincides with the release of a survey of 434 school district workers, including cafeteria and safety staff, who describe unchecked violence and food waste.
According to Unite Here, 40 percent of workers had recently observed violent incidents at lunch time without sufficient safety workers to cope with them — a situation that would worsen if student safety staff are eliminated as proposed in the current district budget. The majority of workers claimed that more than half the food they serve is thrown away, which they say is related to the school district's conversion of many working school kitchens into satellite kitchens, which reheat frozen food rather than cooking food fresh daily.
When it comes to payday lending, consumer advocates laud Pennsylvania as a highly restrictive state — that is, payday lending storefronts aren't allowed here at all. So, why are advocates claiming a bill currently moving through the state Senate will "end payday lending" in the commonwealth? One answer, say critics, is that they want to hide the fact that the bill is actually designed to do the opposite.
The state Senate Banking and Insurance Committee voted 8-6 this morning to send the bill to the full Senate for a vote. The legislation, introduced by Republican Sen. Pat Browne of Lehigh County, would loosen regulations on payday loans in Pennsylvania, according to Mark Price, a labor economist with the Keystone Research Center. He says that the bill, SB975, would allow lenders to charge up to a 300-percent annual percentage rate (APR) on 14-day loans, allow lenders direct access to borrowers’ bank accounts and give borrowers access to an essentially unlimited number of small, short-term loans.
Al Bowman, the new executive director of the Pennsylvania Consumer Credit Association, a for-profit advocacy group funded by various trade organizations in the credit industry, told The Patriot-News, “The Browne bill is the only short-term credit reform bill that has the promise of ending payday lending in the state.”
As the city's rusted industrial heart is slowly overrun by the inexorable hipster creep up the Market-Frankford line, it can be easy to forget the Kensington neighborhood's roots as a century old bastion for working class Irish-Americans. Generations toiled in the area's many factories and textile mills, eking out an existence and, sometimes, a better life for their families. As the promise of factory jobs dwindled, so did the neighborhood's fortunes.
Some sections of the neighborhood were reshaped by new immigrant families from Puerto Rico and other Latin American countries, as others fell to crime, addiction and abandonment. Still others braced against the storm, and tried to hold the community together.
Do not expect to see any of that nuance in this video, shot by a visitor to Kensington from California in 1982, presumably with an enormous VHS recorder. This video is populated with drunken, racist, generally-not-into-giving-a-fuck types that fit most of the stereotypical qualities associated with the term "Kenzo". There are guns, pills, bad jokes, racial slurs and lots of a-bit-too-cut-off jeans within. You have been warned.
- ActiVman
- adventures
- Arts
- Ask A Man-About-Town
- Award Tour
- Awards
- Bad Idea Factory
- Beer
- Below the Curve
- Bikes
- Booze
- Brian Hickey
- BRT
- Budget
- Budget Fuss
- Business
- Casinos
- City Council
- City Hall
- CouncilMANIC
- CP Abroad
- CP in the Community
- Criminal Justice System
- Day Tripper
- Death and Taxes
- Delaware River
- Design
- DROP
- Drugs
- Dubious Distinction
- Elections
- End of Days
- Environment
- Fashion
- Film Fest
- Financial Meltdown
- FrackTrack
- Free Library
- Gambling
- Gay Stuff
- Get Lit
- Greenstorming
- guns
- Hall Monitor
- Health
- Health Care
- Hello, Kitty
- Holidays
- Ice Cubes
- Iggles
- Immigration
- In Memoriam
- Labor
- Lawsuits
- Letters
- LGBTQ
- Maps
- Marcellus Shale
- Media
- MMA
- Mummers
- Music
- MUST READ
- Mysterious Mysteries
- Nation
- News
- Non Sequitur
- Opinion
- PA politics 2010
- Parking Wars
- Parks and Recreation
- People Send Us This Stuff
- Philadelphia Police
- Philadelphia Union
- Philaphemera
- Philly From Scratch
- philly madness
- Photos
- Poverty
- PPA
- President Obama
- Print Edition
- Prisons
- Protest
- Readers Write
- Real Estate
- Rock Bottom
- Schools
- Science
- Screwing Philly
- SEPTA
- snow
- So Lush
- Soccer
- Sporting Life
- Sports Complex
- State Politicians
- State Politics
- Street Art
- Strike
- Stuff We Like
- Taxes
- Taxi Drivers
- Tech Fetish
- television
- The Budget Crisis
- The City Paper
- The CLOG
- The Human Condition
- The Mayor
- The Phightin Phils
- The World
- Things that make you go hm
- Tinfoil Hats Off
- Under the Table
- Under the Tables
- Urban Development
- Urban Planning
- urban wildlife
- Video Poker
- We Call Shenanigans
- Weather
- Web Junk
- Weekend Omnibus
- White House
- What We've Found
- Women's Issues
- Flyered Up!
- How 'Bout That Weather?
- it's always sunny in philadelphia
- Stu!
- Shopping
- get out
- 10-track mind
- ArtsFlash
- Bloggity
- Bruce Being Bruce
- Colleges
- Comedy
- Gigantic Surprises
- Hello Canary
- Hello Puppy
- errata
- get lost
- Inside The Fishbowl
- Library Closings
- Local Support
- Movies
- Murder
- Night Moves
- Recycling
- radio
- Scientology
- Sex
- Sixers
- Skeeze Police
- State Politicians Screwing Philly
- That's a cool stencil!
- Theater
- Things We See
- This Week
- This Week in Oates
- University City
- WIN
- What we don't heart
- trailer!
- what we heart
- Feeling Guilty
- Askadelphia.
- Broke in Philly
- Contest
- Dance
- Dear Paper Doll
- Do A Good Thing
- Education
- Film Fest Schism
- G20-20 Vision
- Goodbye
- Gossip
- Great American Heroes
- PATCO
- Pearl Jam Week
- Puppy
- Stars of the Photostream
- sustainability
- Lower Merion Webcam-Gate
- The Cycle
- Equality Forum
- Bureaucrat of the Week
- Animals
- ElectionEar
- Photostream
