Elmer Smith | Butkovitz to seek Parking Authority $ for schools

WHEN THE state GOP engineered its takeover of the Philadelphia Parking Authority five years ago, it pledged to use parking revenues to help fund the city's public schools.

The party wasn't talking about springing for a few crates of No. 2 pencils, either. State Rep. John Perzel, who was then speaker of the House, claimed he could identify $45 million in untapped revenues that he would turn over to the cash-strapped schools.

"For years and years," Perzel fumed, the authority "has run amok, spending hundreds of millions of dollars willy-nilly.

"We can dramatically change how it runs and help Philadelphia schools at the same time."

The winds of change blew swiftly. Willy and nilly became Republicans and what had been a bloated Democratic patronage mill is now an even more bloated Republican patronage mill.

That may not seem all that dramatic to you. But it's a sea change compared to the way they have managed to "help Philadelphia schools."

The state passed a law in February 2004 to send the first $25 million of whatever net revenues the PPA board "deemed available" to the city. All revenues above $25 million are to go directly to the schools.

So far, what the PPA has deemed available for the schools is a grand total of $4 million. Even that meager revenue stream has dried up since 2004.

City Controller Alan Butkovitz is combing PPA's books in search of more revenue for the schools.

"The city finance director asked me to take a look," Butkovitz told me yesterday. "That's all I can tell you for now."

Meanwhile, Helen Gym and her band of activists from Parents United for Public Education is appealing to the authority's better nature. They plan to show up at PPA's board meeting next Monday with an olive branch and a suggestion.

They want the PPA to turn over to the school district some $20 million it expects to net from the sale of a PPA building at 20th and Sansom streets that reportedly sold for $36.7 million.

"We want the money to go to our schools," she told me yesterday. "We think we can find a cooperative way to do that, one that will be morally compelling to the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

"We hope to foster a positive relationship with the Parking Authority. We think the state would be delighted to be a part of a funding solution for the schools at a time when the need is so great."

In fact, the state has stepped up in recent years. Since its cooperative takeover of the Philadelphia public schools, state funding has increased significantly. Between city and state funding increases, the per-pupil expenditure has gone from about $6,000 a year to more than $11,000. But the Parking Authority is a much tougher nut to crack.

Helen Gym, Aissia Richardson and Gerald Wright, the leadership collective at Parents United for Public Education, know that. But they remain hopeful even though PPA director Vincent Fenerty has told them that the proceeds of the sale can't go to the schools.

"That's what his letter said," Gym acknowledged. "But at least they were responsive. It wasn't a brush-off. We think it's important for parents to understand the relationship between the state and the city schools. That's our approach."

It's an attempt at civic engagement based in the belief that well-meaning public officials will do the right thing if you can show them how to do it. So, they'll show up at next Monday's meeting with their olive branches and their suggestion and a belief in the basic decency of public officials. But the Parking Authority would do well to remember that this is the same group of activists who have had to get in the School Reform Commission's face from time to time. "We're not naive," Helen Gym reminded me.

"We're not going away." *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith