Upcoming Budget Vote Prompts Protests In City Council
City Council is expected this morning to pass the fiscal year 2010 budget, a deal cut with Mayor Nutter last week that includes a five-year increase by 1 cent in the local sales tax and a push down the road for some funding obligations to the pension fund. That deal rankles some city residents. About thirty community activists and city union members gathered outside of Council this morning to protest the budget, which requires approval from the state General Assembly on the sales tax and pension issue.
Upcoming Budget Vote Prompts Protests In City Council
Chris Brennan
City Council is expected this morning to pass the fiscal year 2010 budget, a deal cut with Mayor Nutter last week that includes a five-year increase by 1 cent in the local sales tax and a push down the road for some funding obligations to the pension fund. That deal rankles some city residents and employees. About thirty community activists and city union members gathered outside of Council this morning to protest the budget, which requires approval from the state General Assembly on the sales tax and pension issue.
"We don't want a budget that's balanced on the backs of workers in this city," said Rev. Jesse Brown of the Essential Services Coalition. "We are not seeing leadership in City Hall. The mayor is not leading. City Council is not leading. What they have done is business as usual."
Among the protesters were leaders of District Council 47, which represents white-collar city employees and want more probation officers hired, and the Neighborhood Networks. The protesters called on the city to raise local wage and businss taxes rather than making cuts in services and jobs.
I live in the city, I'm one of the handful of people that voted the other day, I pay wage and real estate and sales taxes, I would like to communicate to these folks that I most assuredly want a budget balanced the way that it is. And besides this budget is not "balanced on the backs of workers in this city," it is balanced partly on the backs of City workers, with sacrifice for everybody. Rev. Brown needs to wake up and realize that City government workers have better benefits than me, than him, than most of his constituents, that if his constituents weren't paying for Lexus health care and pensions and government workers that work short work weeks and can't ever get fired for performance, then his constituents might pay less taxes and have more money in their own pockets. And if you raise business taxes there will be fewer workers in the city, period, so how is that not balancing the budget on their backs. This rhetoric and position is so completely stupid in 2009 that it embarrasses me that I make the choice to live with these people. If city union workers have it so awful why is it that you never ever ever hear of there being a shortage of applicants for the jobs. Well I'll tell you why because there's a high unemployment rate and a high poverty rate and these jobs provide great benefits and job security compared to the rest of the 2009 world so why don't these people shut up and start contributing to the solutions of the present to improve the future and stop living in the past.— anodyne- Essential Services is essentially a defender of bureaucracy. they don't represent the city or its needs. they're loud but I wonder if anyone cares. it's high time city workers made a few sacrifices as well.— dreinterests
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David Gambacorta spent a small eternity writing about cops, drug dealers and serial killers. Now he’s writing about power and politics – which sometimes reminds him of the old crime beat. He joined the Daily News in 2005. And yes, he knows you’re not quite sure how to pronounce his last name. E-mail tips to gambacd@phillynews.com
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Jan Ransom, a native New Yorker, joined the Daily News in 2010 after graduating from Howard University. She has since written about the difficulty of filing police complaints, tax deadbeats and life after violent home invasions. She joined the Daily News City Hall Bureau in 2011 and has plunged headfirst into reporting on administration budget battles and City Council shenanigans. E-mail tips to ransomj@phillynews.com
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Sean Collins Walsh is from Bucks County and went to Northwestern University. He joined the Daily News copy desk in 2012 and now covers the Nutter administration. Before that, he interned at papers including The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News and The Seattle Times. E-mail tips to walshSE@phillynews.com
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