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Archive: December, 2011
“I am not a poor black kid,” writes Philadelphia small business motivational writer-speaker Gene Marks near the beginning of a Forbes screed entitled “If I Was a Poor Black Kid.”
Marks writes books with charming titles like “In God We Trust: Everyone Else Pays Cash” and “The Complete Idiot's Guide To Successful Outsourcing.” He is a board member of the National Speaker’s Association and gives a speech titled “Quicker! Better! Wiser!” and his biography states that he is a “short, balding and mediocre certified public accountant.”
OK, so it's not as frenetic as, say, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry's Facebook wall, but Mayor Nutter's social networking page has a certain flavor of its own. Think critiques of his facial hair, shoutouts from old acquaintances and family, and, yes, untempered insults. Now, as Technically Philly notes, a new blog from street art watcher Conrad Benner is ready to keep you up to date on the writing on the (Facebook) wall. Yup, it's a site entirely devoted to Facebook comments on his posts. Best, the blog, dubbed Nutterbook, is ostensibly updated regularly by one F. Rizzo.
Susan Kettell, volunteer organizer of the artist-in-residence program at E.M. Stanton Elementary School, explained to the sleepy, nervous students gathered at 9:30 a.m. Saturday why they had to sing as the group entered the Philadelphia School District's Facilities Master Plan community meeting. “Marching and singing were important in the Civil Rights movement,” she said, raising her arms to guide her students. They practiced a few times, and the group of roughly 40 children and adults in yellow “Save Our Stanton” shirts waved Stanton flags, carried signs and sang a simple refrain: “I feel like going on.”
The School District wants to close schools across the city, including Stanton, to get rid of 70,000 empty classroom seats. But the community at Stanton, which fought off closure in 2003, is not about to go quietly. They say their school, which has made Annual Yearly Progress eight years running, should be used as a model for neighborhood schools citywide. Temwa Wright, Save Our Stanton organizer and mother of a Stanton sixth-grader, said, “Stanton is a model school that should be replicated, not closed.” The Philadelphia School District sees it differently. Officials expressed that the most efficient way to utilize the 86-year-old school is to close it down and send its 235 students to the two remaining public K-8 school in the area, Arthur or Childs.
The School District cites Stanton’s old building and low enrollment as their decision-making factors. Stanton’s physical capacity is roughly 400 students (meaning they are at 50 percent enrollment), and the school building is dilapidated. They have no auditorium, and the building needs to be brought up to wheelchair-accessible standards with the installation of an elevator.
Seven Republicans who want to take on Democratic Senator Bob Casey faced off at a debate at the Pennsylvania Society, the annual confab that brings the state's major political and economic power brokers to New York for schmoozing, cocktails and a really fancy banquet dinner. This event has been in New York for a century, and has been criticized for not bringing the big-spending to, say, Scranton, Philadelphia, Erie or Pittsburgh and for its general lobbyist-industrial complex decadence.
On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation that would mandate the DNA testing of all people arrested for felonies and some misdemeanors.
A bill introduced by Councilman Frank DiCicco that would strike a public street, Bodine Street, to make way for the expansion of Finnigan's Wake to include a three-story deck, looks like it won't pass after all. (As we reported previously, the bill had been controversial in the neighborhood because: a.) Finnigan's regulars are already fairly rowdy, even without outdoor party decks; b.) Neighbors say the bar has been blocking Bodine with its dumpster for years now, and are annoyed that they now want to make that encroachment official; and c.) It seemed all too convenient/cozy that Finnigan's owners, Democratic party movers, would be expanding their property with the cooperation of the new Democratic City Committee building next door.)
In yesterday's Council session, DiCicco declined to put the bill up for passage — he's been hoping that neighborhood groups and owners of the bar could reach an agreement first — and it appears he won't move to pass it at next week's final City Council session either.
Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association president Matt Ruben tells CP: "The NLNA has met with Finnigan's to try to come up with a solution that won't involve striking Bodine from the City Plan. We also were informed tonight that Councilman DiCicco will not be calling for a final City Council vote on the street-striking bill. So at least for the time being, Bodine is safe from being struck, and we're hoping we can find a solution that will allow Finnigan's to do more catering/event business (which is their goal here) while at the same time preserving and improving the appearance and usability of Bodine."
No one from DiCicco's office was able to confirm that this morning.
A handful of City Council members briefly stepped out of line this morning to take a (failed) stand against a bill "to provide a credit against the tax for owners of condominiums and cooperatives and planned community units who do not receive regular City refuse, recycling and bulk item collection services."
Counilman Bill Green — who for some reason doesn't seem to think that saving Philly condo owners a few bucks is Philly's most pressing issue — said it would drain millions from the city budget without creating jobs. "This is a refund of tax dollars for a service that is not taken advantage of by citizens," he said. "What about citizens who don't use the school system or police or fire?"
"An RFP for citywide trash pickup i believe would be likely less expensive than this bill. This bill however is bad policy. It is also a choice that Council would be making that the best way to spend these millions is not schools, not tax refunds that create jobs, not homeless, not lead remediation, not police or rec centers, but instead payments to condo owners."
Still, with 12-to-5 majority, the bill passed.
The two schools named for closing in West and Southwest Philadelphia are Drew, an elementary school, and Pepper, a middle school. While other schools — like South Philly's Stanton, the fate of which will be debated this Saturday — are seeing rallies of support, no one at a school district-run meeting last night seemed too upset at the prospect of seeing Drew or Pepper disappear as part of a citywide consolidation plan to deal with some 70,000 empty classroom seats district wide.
What they are upset about was how the distribution of the students would be managed — particularly as they'll be absorbed into other neighborhood schools such as Lea, where an active parents group has been working hard to improve programming and facilities for the past few years. And, they're worried about redistricting in the region — particularly for those who have been sticking it out in West Philly for years just to get their child a coveted spot at the Penn Alexander school, where camping out overnight each January to register children has become a loathed annual ritual.
Vicki McGarvey, who lives at 46th and Osage and has a three-and-a-half-year-old child, says, "everyone is very concerned about the redrawing of the catchment zone. Some parents are concerned about having their children assigned to different schools," she says. "The uncertainty of knowing when we'll know if our child will get a spot at a given school, it's unacceptable not to know until right before school starts." Clare Powell, who lives on the same block with her daughter and grandchild, says she is worried about both her children and her housing value. She says the school is the only reason she still lives in the neighborhood. "My husband and I are both blue collar workers, so the home value is huge. ... What am I going to do when I retire and I want to be able to sell my house?"
Superintendent Leroy Nunery said redistricting will be an open conversation and explained that schools being closed fit a number of factors, including below-capacity enrollment and a relative cost of repair that's more than 75 percent the cost of replacement, what the district terms an FCI index of 75 percent or more. (When asked about the FCI index of 98-year-old Lea school, he admitted it was 72 percent, and said "there are needs that need to be addressed.") But Nunery says the district's plan is broader than that: "We have to make sure Penn Alexander is not the only beacon on the hill. When you don't have a strategy and you don't stick to it, this is what you get: you get a lot of spotty outcomes."
Someone wants to open a Subway sandwich shop at 4533 Baltimore Ave. and many in the diverse and (to put it mildly) left-leaning neighborhood don't want that to happen.
As City Paper reported back in 2010, Tracey Gordon's victory celebration for winning the seat of committee person in South Philadelphia's 40th Ward was short-lived. Gordon, who won despite the best efforts of the Democratic City Committee to stop her, was ejected from the ward's first meeting by 12th District police.
Now, Gordon is filing a class-action lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, with the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm Langer, Grogan & Diver, to restore her to her seat as a committee person in the ward.
Back in 2010, CP wrote that, it "may not seem right, but it's legal," according to Jonathan David, director of voter services at the Committee of Seventy. "Parties are essentially private."
Still, others have fought similar cases in court and won, according to Gloria Gilman of the Philadelphia Democratic Progressive Caucus, which is supporting the lawsuit. Among them is Hal Rosenthal, who was a 16-year committeeman in the Far Northeast, 58th Ward, who says he ran and won in the 1970s alongside four other independent-minded Democrats who were later barred from ward meetings. "Our ward leader refused to permit us to come to the meetings, and we went into federal court. The court said that we were elected by the registered Democratic voters in our divisions, and only they could remove us. They ordered the ward leaders to give us all the rights of other committee people," he says.
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