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Archive: October, 2011
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Photo: Neal Santos
A few weeks ago, a certain flyer began to circulate Center City. On it was a picture of City Council At-Large candidate David Oh, as pictured on the cover of the Philadelphia Daily News. Above the picture of Oh on the flyer were the words "Special Forces Faker." Below and on the back of the flyer were various accusations that Oh has lied about his military career.
The flyer did not mention, however, who had printed it.
10th District Councilman Brian O'Neill, the sole Republican District representative on Philadelphia's City Council, commands a great deal of influence.
He also commands a great number of jobs, according to many sources inside City Hall.
While O'Neill's district staff is a little smaller than average — the city's directory lists four aides working out of O'Neill's office — various sources independently confirmed to City Paper that O'Neill has near-total control of the obscure "Republican Technical and Planning Office."
The fifth-floor office ostensibly serves the legislative needs of Council Republicans.
The City Council Technical & Planning Office began in the '90s, according to attorney Stan Shapiro, who worked in it for more than 20 years. In the beginning, Shapiro says, the office employed two Republican attorneys to assist with legislation, but Republicans and Democrats worked side by side.
At some point the number of Republicans expanded, desks were moved and a door was shut between the two groups. The Republican wing now employs five personnel — that's one more employee than the Democratic tech office, which serves four times as many legislators.
As the Occupy Wall Street movement stretches deep into its second month, the media is picking up a new and negative message: “After weeks of cautiously accepting the teeming, round-the-clock demonstrations spawned by Occupy Wall Street, some stressed-out cities have run out of patience.” (The subhead of yesterday’s New York Times article.)
Conservatives are eagerly trying to smear Occupy Wall Street for the odd deranged participant (and in a wide-open movement/tent city like this, they’re not hard to find: homeless people with mental illness, Ron Paul types, and people who are recently laid off and pissed off, but just plain uninformed). They are also trying to work the referees, accusing the mainstream media of secretly supporting the movement (including a freelance arts journalist who worked on — gasp — public radio’s “World of Opera”! So that’s where the liberals sneak their bias into the media ... ).
The greater media threat to Occupy Wall Street, however, comes not from right-wingers but from the more subtle attempts to frame the protests as unpragmatic and past their time. The first such message was the round of publicity given to the price tag of paying overtime to police. This failed to catch on: It seemed crass to put a price on the right to public assembly, especially given the vast public monies wasted on Wall Street.
Many Northern Liberties residents don't exactly have a soft spot for the drunken crowds outside Finnegan's Wake to begin with. So the idea wiping away a public street (OK, alleyway) to make room for three stories of outdoor alcohol service didn't exactly win over the crowds at Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association meetings this week.
Nonetheless, outgoing City Councilman Frank DiCicco has introduced a bill to strike Bodine Street from the the city plan, between Spring Garden and Green, making way for a three-story outdoor deck that would run between the bar and Rep. Bob Brady's Democratic City Committee offices coming in next door. "The sentiment was overwhelmingly not in favor," says NLNA zoning committee chairman Larry Freedman. "Part of their argument was, 'We want to improve the street because it's so crappy, and there's a dumpster out there all the time,'" he adds — noting that it was the bar's own dumpster that has been blocking the street for years, despite numerous complaints from neighbors. "That didn't really fly."
The bill is currently listed as having been heard favorably by Council's streets committee, but in the meantime neighborhood input is collected. Whether the ordinance will be pushed through over the objections of neighbors remains to be seen.
The Delaware River Waterfront Corp. (DRWC) is sending its master plan for the Delaware River waterfront on to the Philadelphia City Planning m to be hopefully incorporated into Philly's new zoning code. Neighborhood groups are cheering, but James Anderson, the owner of 57 acres north of Penn Treaty Park, including the Cramps Shipyard property, may be gearing up for legal action according to Kevin Feeley, one of a group of - lawyers and representatives who appeared at the meeting to unsuccessfully ask that Anderson's property be omitted from the master plan.
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Senate passed school vouchers legislation that would give public funds to poor students at underperforming schools to attend private schools, including religious institutions. The legislation has been a priority for Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, and received support from some Democrats, notably Philadelphia Democratic Sen. Anthony Williams. But the teachers' union, public education advocates, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) immediately criticized the legislation, which will now be taken up by the House.
“Taxpayers see school vouchers for what they are — an expensive new entitlement program that takes money from the poorest public schools and puts it into the pockets of private and religious schools that are not accountable financially or academically to taxpayers,” according to a statement from Jerry T. Jordan, President of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. "Meanwhile, public schools with inadequate funding are left with even fewer resources than before to provide the education that disadvantaged children need to lift them out of poverty."
Indeed, Gov. Corbett presided over a nearly billion-dollar cut to public schools this summer, and his school vouchers legislation would use an increasingly limited pot of public school monies to send students to private schools. And there is no guarantee that any given private school will admit a given student. Unlike public schools, they can turn down whomever they choose, including because of a student’s religion or sexual orientation — or just because of weak academic performance, which will be the case with many lower-income students.
Philadelphia City Council's Rules Committee will hold a hearing today on a bill proposed by Councilman Frank DiCicco that would create a "neighborhood improvement district" in the Callowhill / Chinatown North neighborhood.
Everyone in the District would be required to pay, in addition to their regular real estate taxes, an additional 7% property tax assessment to the NID, which money would be spent on neighborhood improvements.
The idea is quite controversial: it was first suggested by Center City District's Paul Levy as a way to establish a fund with which to help maintain the proposed elevated park on the now-defunct Reading Viaduct. Although the bill has now been amended to remove language referring the park (which not everyone in the neighborhood considers a priority), many residents — many, but not all, Asian — say the bill places an undue burden residents and businesses.
They also feel that the NID is being pushed by one specific group in the neighborhood — mostly condo-dwelling newcomers to the area — and that their voice won't be represented in the NID leadership.
(Read more about the debate in my article for City Paper ("Seeing Green," 9-15-2011) and in my profile of Center City District CEO Paul Levy ("The King of Center City," 10-6-2011).)
If the bill passes today, neighbors still opposed to it will have to collect the signatures of more than half the residents of the district or whose properties represent more than half of the total assessed value to overturn the bill.
Which makes this proposal a little bit unusual: It is, essentially, a real estate hike imposed on a specific neighborhood by a single Council member with the support of an unknown number of residents and the clear opposition of a sizeable portion of the neighborhood.
At the bill's last hearing, a few weeks ago,neighborhood activist John Yuen announced the he and others had already collected signatures objecting to the NID from 53% of the neighborhood. That day, DiCicco also introduced an amendment cutting out a portion of the neighborhood that contains a large housing development comprised of low-income and senior Asians (see above).
That move might been seen as accommodating: Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation executive director John Chin had mentioned that particular area as an example of the hardship the NID would impose on the Asian community.
But it could also bee seen as tactical: In eliminating the small square, DiCicco surely eliminated some percentage of the opposition.
DiCicco, Levy, and neighbors who support the NID point out that other areas have created business districts: Old City, South Street, Center City, University City.
But this would be the first residential improvement district in the city; and while the neighborhoods mentioned above have obvious attractions that make them special destinations, it's not clear that the Callowhill neighborhood is totally comparable to them.
Follow Isaiah Thompson here and on Twitter for more.
This afternoon at 1 p.m. at the Warnock Center, or Nov. 2, 1-3 p.m. at Grays Ferry Center you can check out some of the 400-plus properties that will be auctioned off on Nov. 16. The auction's promotional material targets "individuals, builders and investors"; the latter, we hope, is not code for speculators, who are some of the culprits in Philly's existing blight problem. The full list of properties is online, along with an interactive map.
After two years, the final version of the Master Plan for the Central Delaware was published last night, and it offers plenty to look forward to. The Delaware River Waterfront Corp. (DRWC) and partners developed a framework for a network of open spaces, low- and mid-rise residential, mixed-use, cultural and civic spaces and other uses, connected by six miles of pedestrian-friendly trails.
Highlights of the plan, like a series of connector streets (the first being the newly gussied up Race Street Connector), have already been publicized. And other elements, like the conversion of the hulking PECO building, between Penn Treaty Park and a proposed Berks Pier Park — with its urban beach and swimming area — into a cultural space with galleries and an outdoor amphitheater, could be a decade or more down the road, says DRWC's Sarah Thorp. (She says that PECO is still using the building for the next seven to 10 years, but the fact that they allowed the proposal to be written into the master plan was a good sign.)
The plan also rethinks Penns Landing as a 10-acre park with an urban porch with cafes, market vendors, a flexible water feature that could double as an ice rink, and a pedestrian esplenade at Walnut and Chestnut streets.
The entire plan is online, but DRWC will also be presenting the plan Friday morning at their offices at 121 N. Columbus Blvd.
When Republican 10th District Councilman Brian O'Neill met Democratic challenger Bill Rubin for a debate at the auditorium of the Raymond and Miriam Klein Jewish Community Center last night, only a few dozen voters from the Northeast Philly district showed up. But those who did attend for the verbal brawl weren't disappointed.
The two talked about the city's new zoning code: O'Neill said, "I've seen pieces of the preliminary [zoning] code that [would be] devastating for the neighborhoods in Northeast Philly that I represent." They talked about the controversial Deferred Retirement Option Plan: Rubin griped, "DROP was never meant for elected officials," accusing O'Neill of having signed up for the program briefly. They debated over whether Council should have city cars: O'Neill boasted, "The mayor said to me, 'I'd like you to turn in your car keys.' I said, 'Sure, as soon as you drop off your keys for me.' ... But if the city got rid of cars, I'd be at the front of the line to turn in my keys." And they talked about whether Council members should hold second jobs, each accusing the other of double- or triple-dipping.
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