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Thursday, December 4, 2008

Pleasant Surprises from the Mayor at Town Hall Meeting

Last week, Harris Sokoloff had an op-ed in the Philadelphia Daily News about how to make town hall meeting productive for both citizens and elected officials. We asked him to write a blog post about the budget forums being organized by Mayor Nutter. Here is what Harris has to say.....

When I wrote my op ed for last Wednesday’s Daily News ("Making 'town hall' meetings work" - http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/35119409.html), I was expecting the same old same old. I was surprised by some of what actually happened. And surprised that the news reports didn’t discuss it. I guess, it can be hard to see what you don’t expect.

I haven’t seen any comment on an unexpected surprise at the Mayor’s Town Hall meetings on the budget: Mayor Nutter and managing director Dr. Camille Barnett asking for a different kind of input. They asked citizens to fill out a survey to give the budget team some information. I don’t think this has ever been done before.

First they asked citizens to rate the importance of nine city services. The survey results will tell the mayor which services were most important, but also each respondent’s passion for each item.

Second, they asked citizens about trade-offs: what they would cut -- in order to restore funding to something else.

The fact is: the Mayor is asking us, the citizens of Philadelphia, to make the kinds of hard choices he has to make.

But the Mayor and his team didn’t go far enough. Yes, they asked us to share their thoughts, but nobody stopped to ask “why.” That’s an important issue – why. Why is Kay willing to sacrifice the fire department in order to have more tax cuts? Why did Jay give all of his points to licenses & inspections when we are forced to close libraries?

Citizens can do this kind of work together. But they need structure and a veteran facilitator to guide them in their discussions. Under the right conditions they can work through difficult trade-offs together. This not only will help to solve our problems, but it will also create understanding and a sense of unity among different people from different cultures. Not to mention, it might help the Mayor out.

It’s not too late to do this for the next round of budgeting in January or February.

Why not give it a try?

Posted by Ben Waxman @ 3:13 PM Permalink | 4 comments

Comments

Posted 05:26 PM, 12/04/2008

CleanupPhilly

This is has been a long standing criticism of the budgeting process in Council. It's closed, opaque, little opportunity for public input unless you go to hearing during a work day in person, etc. The budget is not tied to performance, benchmarks, or metrics. We are not even on par with the way smaller cities budget. Here's one list of suggestions: http://www.philadelphiaforward.org/need_budget_reform -- Nutter promised in his campaign that the items Phila. Forward advocated were his own, but it seems forgotten now, even though there was plenty of warning that revenue was decreasing as the economy slowed down in the last two quarters of 2008. Nutter just didn't listen to critics who said his budget was too optimistic and had no provision for a downturn, which every responsible budget must have.

Posted 05:39 PM, 12/04/2008

CleanupPhilly

For a long, long time people have been pointing out that the city can't just be denial about property taxes because there will come a day when we've borrowed all we can, and when we've raised taxes on wages and business all we can, and that revenue will go spiral downward, and then what? The city is owed $568 million in overdue property taxes. http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/summary

Posted 05:43 PM, 12/04/2008

CleanupPhilly

Council has not implemented the revenue neutral legislation it needs so that there will be smooth transition to FMV, and the BRT will have to follow state law at some point soon and just start FMV. We can afford our city if we stop trying not to collect property taxes and start growing a responsible tax base that doesn't drive out business. That means we can't keep all this property in nontaxpaying status, for whatever reason. Am I pleasantly surprised that the Mayor says oh, hey, we've got to do what other cities have done for decades, that we still don't do after the state ordered oversight of our budgeting process, and that is LISTEN to people! Woohoo! How about put this property back into active property tax paying status by selling it openly, competitively at auction to 1. pay off the old taxes, 2. pay the new future taxes and 3. give the city hard cash revenue on property the city owns? Here's the list of the properties that OWE that the city ignores even studiously than it ignores citizens: http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/topdelinquents/mailingaddress -- budgeting openly with input and benchmarks is as foreign a concept to them as is collecting and assessing property taxes to maximize revenue. Good luck with that. They're just too stupid.

Comment removed.

4 comments

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Ben Waxman reports and blogs for “It's Our Money.” Before joining “It's Our Money,” he was a regular contributor to the Philadelphia Daily News op-ed page and former contributor to the blog Young Philly Politics. He studied political science at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA.

Doron Taussig is the Project Manager for “It's Our Money.” He is also a graduate student in communications at Temple University. Previously he worked as a Staff Writer and News Editor for the Philadelphia City Paper.

Dave Merrell is the Web Editor for "It's Our Money." He comes to the project from Philly.com, where he is a web producer. Originally from upstate New York, he moved to Philadelphia after graduating from Haverford College with a degree in math and economics.

Anthony Campisi reports and blogs for "It's Our Money." Originally hailing from Central Jersey, he came to Philadelphia while a student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied intellectual history. He also writes about transportation for PlanPhilly, an innovative urban planning website started by PennPraxis, the consulting arm of the Penn School of Design.