U-Turn: PGW's sign of the times

In one of most pre-publicized political stunts of 2015, Republican City Council at-large candidate Matt Wolfe stood in front of the closed doors of the Center City Philadelphia Gas Works office and told a crowd of about 50 supporters yesterday that he was running for office because of "City Council's killing the deal to sell PGW."

Cute. Nice gimmick. Setting up and announcing in front of PGW, a group he wanted to bash.

I get it.

But the juicy part was unexpected - probably even by Wolfe - until yesterday.

Wolfe,  58, who serves as a ward leader in West Philly, said he chose the PGW at 11th and Chestnut Streets since "this office is closed. Now if anybody saw my Facebook page or the emails I sent out, there was a picture of the office hours right here," later adding, "And by taking the sign down, what did they do? What they did was make it even more difficult for their customers to know what's going on."

Strangely enough, the office hours sign on the window that I had previously seen over the past few weeks was gone.

No. I'm not having a Brian Williams moment. It was there. Swear it was. The sign, viewable on the front page of Wolfe's campaign site and taken by Wolfe at the end of January, had clearly been removed sometime over the past week.

I spoke with PGW Director of Communications Barry O'Sullivan and asked him whether PGW removed the sign because of Wolfe's anticipated event. "Absolutely not," O'Sullivan told me, adding, via email, "The interesting part is that these questions are coming as we are in the midst of updating all our Customer Service Centers (we have already completed renovations at our offices in North Philly, South Philly and West Philly) and upgrading our signage and customer service outreach (last year we completely rebuilt our website and launched our social media channels). A few days ago we sent temporary signs to some of our Customer Service Centers, so customers can see the full list of offices and when they're open, not just the opening hours of the office they're visiting. Evidently the staff at the Center City office put up that new sign and elected to remove the older one."

In a brief phone interview after the campaign announcement, I asked Wolfe whether he bought O'Sullivan's response. His response?

"Implausable," said Wolfe. "It's just so stupid for him to say that. It's [the former sign] of a style that looks like it had been there for years. Why take down the sign? It makes it even more inconvenient for their customers. The apparent reason is so that they look a little less stupid."

So here we are. A missing sign. A difference of opinion.

Please forgive me, as if we don't have enough "-gates," but I now introduce to you, "Sign-Gate."

 Contact John Featherman at John@Featherman.com