Half Empty: Loss of Dad Vail proves Nutter incompetence

What makes us love a city? The rites and rituals and institutions that define it. The Dad Vail Regatta was one of them, a passage of spring for 55 years that attracted 3,000 collegiate rowers from all over the country.

It wasn't simply a rowing event. It was a festival of splendid youth in a city that doesn't have enough youth, against a backdrop of what may well be the most picturesque spot in Philadelphia, Boathouse Row and the storied flows of the Schuylkill. The change in traffic patterns on Kelly Drive was an inconvenience, but every time you went by the Dad Vail and saw the sweet frenzy of kids in college sweatshirts from all over the country, how could you not smile?

What makes us hate a city? When the top public official we elect with hope because he promised hope gives us unacceptable incompetence.

Many have made excuses for Mayor Nutter, citing ad nauseam the deep fiscal problems he inherited. It is hard being mayor in a city and a country that is broke. It's also a thousand times harder being an average citizen in a city and a country that is broke. Nutter has adopted a strategy of trying to get the electorate to feel sorry for him, somebody from 55th and Larchwood still trying to figure his way in a very tough job. Pathetic.

The loss of the Dad Vail, and the administration's attempts to blame everyone but itself, can only lead to one conclusion given the mayor's first two years:

The con is over.

Michael Nutter got elected because of whim, luck, excessive hatred for predecessor John Street, and a brilliant campaign ad that featured his daughter. So eager were we to have someone without Street's personality of disdain, we chose Nutter because he seemed accessible and likable when in fact he wasn't either as a councilman. Ed Rendell when he was mayor nicknamed him "The Nutterian." Street thought Nutter was a fraud and a fake. We forgot that his portfolio was the Shakespearean quote come to political life, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." We forgot that he had never run anything. We forgot that he had never shown any particular political skill. We forgot because life is about forgetting in the hope that hopes can come true.

They can't. We elected a mayor who, given the strictures of the Democratic machine, may well get a second term. For those of us who live here and get once-a-week garbage collection in return for the wage tax, the business-privilege tax, the net-profits tax, the franchise tax, the increased sales tax, and a million other tax gnats, what does the continuation of Mayor Nutter mean?

Disaster.

The Dad Vail, one of the city's great institutions, never should have been lost (it is supposedly temporary, just like the wage tax). It was as indigenous to the character of Philadelphia as the Italian Market and the Mummers Parade and the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Take these away and what do you have? Kansas City.

Nutter had an obligation to prevent the loss of the Dad Vail. This is why we have a mayor. If it were an isolated event, it would still be unpardonable. But it follows the stench of the library debacle. And the Board of Revision of Taxes debacle. And the SEPTA debacle, in which Gov. Rendell and U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (D., Pa.) had to throw Nutter aside to get anything accomplished. And the debacle of the city union negotiations, in which the politically weak Nutter has inexplicably failed to hammer away at work rules that make too many jobs paid vacations. If there is a strike, there is no assurance of public support for the mayor.

If we buy the story that the move of the Dad Vail to Rumson, N.J., was a fait accompli by the time city officials met with regatta organizers, it means that the city was blindsided. Is it truly possible given that it takes place in the district Nutter served as a councilman for 15 years? What a condemnation, a city run by people who have no idea what is going on.

If the Nutter administration officials knew well beforehand, and I believe they must have, then it means they did virtually nothing to prevent the Dad Vail from going. No organized attempt to raise money from the city's corporations and law firms to help support the nonprofit event. No attempt to find a sugar daddy - if they exist in Rumson, they exist in Philadelphia. No attempt to reverse myopic fiscal policies like charging the Dad Vail and other events for city services. No attempt to do anything except sigh, "What could we do? They had all the money," a city of 1.45 million unable to compete with a community, however elite and rich, of 7,000.

If you read the account in Thursday's Inquirer by Patrick Kerkstra and Maya Rao of how the Dad Vail was lost, the most startling revelation is that the initial letter sent by regatta officials in late October, warning the city that it was considering leaving, was ignored.

Maybe everybody in City Hall was too preoccupied with the Phillies in the playoffs. Or maybe Nutter was still very tired from his Oct. 14 fund-raiser at the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center Hotel. Roughly 200 people attended, and Scott Freda, the mayor's campaign-finance director, told The Inquirer the campaign was on track to meet its goal of about half a million dollars. Forget the stupidity of how this plays right into the hands of the city unions, a mayor and his mantra of how there is no cash hitting up his friends and supporters for as much cash as he could get his hands on. But as you drive by Boathouse Row next May to the sight and sound of nothing, remember this:

That half a million dollars was also the exact amount needed for the Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia.

Was the fund-raiser worth it, Mayor Nutter?

The con is over.