Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
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Also this issue: Developing Dilemma Blondes and Bikers The Bell Curve |
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January 30-February 5, 2003
hall monitor
Fuss-Budget
Get ready for the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Mayor John Street unveiled his budget plan for this year and his financial plan for the next five years to City Council at his annual budget address Tuesday morning in the packed Perelman Theater of the Kimmel Center, and not everyone is going to be happy. Street's budget proposes to slash more than 1,600 city employees from the payroll, starting with 50 administrative positions in the mayor's office, managing director's office, and finance department.
Never once taking his eyes off the TelePrompTer during the 40-minute speech, the mayor told the roomful of friends and supporters, " We must have the courage to make the tough choices required to balance our budget, reform our government and make the investments required to improve the quality of life for all Philadelphians. Beginning at the highest level of this government we have accepted this challenge."
Street also said he intends to close some public buildings, although in his budget message and in a question-and-answer session afterward with reporters, was unspecific about which public buildings. He did, however, promise that cuts and closings would be carefully considered, and as often as possible, programs and facilities would be combined to minimize the pain to neighborhood residents.
And speaking of residents' pain, the mayor promised to ease the citizens' wage and real estate tax burdens, reminding those assembled that he led the fight to stop wage tax increases in 1989, and that he provided City Council with the leadership to pass tax-reducing budgets throughout the '90s. Surprisingly enough, considering his tooth-and-nail fights with Council last spring and fall when he vetoed such reductions, not one person in the room laughed aloud. When asked later at the press session how he could possibly square his past opposition to tax cuts to the voters, Street simply told the reporter that he has oversimplified the mayor's position, and moved on to the next question.
Before the mayor took the stage, City Controller Jonathan Saidel, who sat in the press section and kept up a running commentary with reporters and Council members, provided a bit of entertainment.
"You were the best driver I ever had! I never should have fired you!" Saidel jokingly shouted at Councilman Frank DiCicco, who shot back, "You should have stuck with me, you'd be on top of the world right now, instead of a bum!"
Other than that, it was pretty much a normal City Council session, with obscure bills sent to committees as fast as Chief Clerk Marie Hauser could read them, which is pretty damn fast. Then came Council's moving tribute to one of its own, the late Lucien Blackwell, who died last Friday at the age of 71.
City Council members took turns mourning Blackwell's passing and praising his service to the people of the city. Councilman David Cohen lamented the loss of one of Philadelphia's last "men of the people." Rick Mariano praised Blackwell's Korean War service and Michael Nutter proposed renaming West River Drive after the former councilman and congressman, and promised to draft a bill to that effect. The only Council member who did not wax eloquent was 82-year-old Republican at-large Thacher Longstreth, who remained frozen in his seat the entire time. He didn't speak, he didn't move, he barely even blinked.
Just before the mayor took the stage to deliver his address, the city's seal fell off the podium. The yellow Frisbee-sized circle, emblazoned with the words, "Philadelphia John F. Street, Mayor," clanged to the stage, prompting a couple of Kimmel Center workers to use double-sided tape in an effort to make the thing stick to the front of the lectern. The tape job didn't last. Ironically, or perhaps prophetically, the seal fell again during the mayor's address, right at the part where he made a thinly veiled plea for re-election, calling Philadelphia a "world-class" city, and crowing, "I would match the development taking place in Philadelphia with any urban center in America!"
Later in the afternoon, Saidel was contacted at his office for comment. In contrast to his earlier playful banter, Saidel was deadly serious in his assessment of the mayor's budget plan. As city controller, Saidel is one of the few people in Philadelphia who fully understands the ins and outs of the city's finances.
"First, I have to give John a lot of credit," Saidel said. "I've lived here all my life, and he's the first mayor I can recall who had the guts to stand there and say he's going to make cuts in personnel and services. There are more city pools and recreation centers than are necessary, and the fact is that we just don't have the population to support our own infrastructure. That said, with the mayor's budget plan, the devil is in the details."
Those details, Saidel said, include who gets the short end of any cuts in services.
"A lot of Street's plans are laudable, like Operation Safe Streets and the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, but there's a cost involved. There's always a cost. The question is, who pays it?" Saidel asked.
The system is bloated. Some of that is Street's fault and some isn't, the controller said. For instance, how many of the proposed job cuts at "the highest level of government" were jobs that Street himself created, Saidel asked rhetorically.
"On the one hand, I'm glad he realizes where we are financially, but some of this stuff should have been done long ago," he said. "Politicians don't talk about tightening belts until we fall on hard times. But a few years ago when we were running a surplus, that was the time to start thinking about making changes."
If there's any belt tightening to be done, Saidel said, people should force the government to tighten first.
"We have to start implementing the plan, certainly, but people want and deserve a government that runs efficiently, and gives them the greatest return for their tax dollar. If we have to make sacrifices, let the government make the most significant sacrifices, not the taxpayers."
In a candid answer to a reporter's question, Street admitted that his budget will cause some anger both in City Hall and some neighborhoods, and is not exactly what he wanted to say while asking people to vote for his re-election.
"In an election year, I would love to offer a budget with no pain, and no cuts," the mayor sighed. "It just didn't happen that way."
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